Vocaloids: Behind The Curtain
by Greg Jonson
Summary: The Vocaloids are slowly taking over the world. On stage, they are pop music idols. Behind the curtain, though, they're still people with their own struggles. And things are far from being simple, especially when mental health becomes an issue... This story is dedicated to the 10th anniversary of Hatsune Miku. Rated M for language and hints at drinking, smoking, and sexual themes.
1. Ch 1 - It's Complicated (Introduction)

_This story is based on the Crypton Future Media vocaloids. Most of the inspiration has been taken from the Magical Mirai shows._

* * *

 **CHAPTER 1: It's Complicated (Introduction)**

"L, R, L, R, stop & dash..." the words were blinking at the gigantic screen in yellow color one by one, piercing the thick air all across the hall.

"...& up & talk..." Rin repeated those words for everyone to hear, dancing and gesturing together with her brother in front of the crowd; some people in the front rows sang with her in ecstasy.

Miku couldn't stop thinking about how much she loved this song. She had just finished getting back into her 'canon' costume a few moments back and was now standing just behind the stage and watched the twins perform. And she couldn't help but smile the whole time.

This was actually a rather rare occasion for her, being able to pause for a second in the middle of a show and not worry about where to stand, how to move, what expression to put on for the fans. Just enjoying her awesome friends performing an awesome song.

What most of the people who kept coming again and again to every single one of the hopelessly sold out shows didn't realise was that the artistic experience required a lot more work than met the eye. What _they_ saw was a stage where the six main stars sung and danced the night away for their pleasure.

Behind the figurative curtain, however, a whole army of various directors, sound engineeers, cameramen, light and video programmers, drivers, managers, make-up artists and whatnot was responsible for the whole group to always get to the correct place, look good, perform at 100 %, and not get crazy from the extravagant life that they all experienced. The Vocaloid's voices might have been what most of the people were coming for, but it would be far less effective without all the visual and musical effects accompanying the show -and everyone behind that.

When this show was first introduced to the fans, the Vocaloids were presented as androids designed to entertain. Of course it was entirely made up, but the act has been tailored to make it seem challenging, if not impossible, for regular human beings. In reality, every detail, every second and every square inch of the whole place had its purpose and people taking care of that purpose; performing live was only one part of what the singers had to do. It also included knowing exactly where to stand at what point, and the choreographies were thought out to correspond with some of the special effects -and vice versa.

One of the more hectic parts of the show was rapid jumping into different outfits made for one particular song, sometimes in mere seconds. These kinds of clothes had to be carefully made specifically for fast changing: they stayed intact on stage, but all one had to do to take them off was to undo a couple of cleverly hidden buttons and the entire outfit would simply collapse on the ground, saving plenty of precious time in which the artist would slip into a different costume. In some cases, the performer wore one costume over another one on stage and indeed only needed a few moments of perfectly mastered flicks of a finger to make it seem -together with the other cued special effects -as if the android literally changed their appearance in front of everyone.

That explains why this brief moment of peace was so dear to Miku. Little things like that meant that everyone had to master their every move, not only on stage but backstage as well; one mistake could put the whole show in jeopardy. So far, only Kagamine Rin was so insolent -or ignorant, nobody was entirely sure -to do things in any sort of unexpected way from time to time. She was a difficult person to understand, anyway. One time, she smashed a prop guitar on stage; and in the next moment, she was the cutest and most innocent little girl in the world. They usually blamed such behavior on puberty; then again it was a small miracle that Len, her twin of literally the same age and genes, was such a sweetheart and sort of boring compared to his sister, despite the usual adult topics of his solo songs.

The Kagamine siblings were the closest to Miku out of the whole ensemble, especially Rin. The two of them usually shared a room when they were staying at hotels; they also shared some of their closest secrets together. There are certain things that girls are only able to tell other girls, and that was the one thing that Len lacked to be just as close of a friend to Miku as his sister was.

Maybe it was because these three were the younger half of the Vocaloids. Luka and Kaito were both twenty years old, having been born only four months apart. They had a few different opinions and approaches to life compared to Miku and the twins who were 16 and 14 years old, respectively. Especially Luka loved to point out how mature she was from time to time; Miku sometimes suspected Rin that her sudden changes of behavior were caused by her desire to grow up as fast as possible, and if that was the case, the pink-haired star might have been to blame partially.

And then on another level above that, of course, was Meiko. She was mainly the group's choreographer and dance instructor who appeared as a permanent guest star on the show -and the truth was she was the most animated dancer of them all. The others sometimes lovingly called her 'Mom-ko' with regards to her role in the group as well as her age -even if she was only 24 years old, she was still by far the eldest of them.

Of course Miku loved them all. Things weren't always all sunshine and rainbows, but they were a family and they were supposed to pull through everything together.

And having a loving family wasn't as customary in her eyes as one might think.

The sudden change in the sound environment made Miku snap back into reality. While she was lost in her thoughts, the twins completed their song and were now on their way off the stage. She turned left and ran towards their exit. Even though she was supposed to come back at the stage from a different entrance, Miku spontaneously decided that she had to do something first.

She bumped into Rin and Len just as they emerged from the heavy black curtains dividing the backstage from everything else. Miku laughed and pulled them both in for a hug.

"Whoa!" Len gasped. "What's this about?"

"Nothing," Miku replied and squeezed him even tighter before letting go. "I just love you guys so much!"

"Well, thanks, but a little heads up would be nice next time," said the boy and rubbed his aching ribs.

His sister chuckled; she still had her arm wrapped around Miku's waist. "We love you too, Miku. _That's_ an appropriate reaction, by the way, you grumpy cat."

"Yeah, yeah. You better get going, though, Sammy's about to explode," said Len. The turqoise girl turned her head back where she was supposed to be: Sam, one of the stage managers, was indeed frenetically beckoning her to come over.

"Whoops. Well, see you guys later!" she smiled again and hopped towards her nervous co-worker.

"What the hell was that?" Sam hissed when she was close enough and pointed towards the stage which was now completely doused in darkness; only the weak reflections of a few thousand glowsticks were roughly revealing the set's outlines. "You're gonna be late."

"Yeah, like 2 seconds. Lighten up, Sammy." Miku twirled right past him and dove into the darkness. People in the front recognised her silhouette and immediately cheered.

The young star spaced out and let the long hours of routine practice guide her every step.

* * *

"Whew," she said about 45 minutes later when she finally left the stage for good that night. She was happy, but exhausted.

"You nailed it," a familiar voice spoke up next to her. "As always."

"Thank you," Miku replied and turned her head. Kaito was standing there, leaning towards the steel construction which was soon to be dismantled and taken away.

"Seriously though," the blue-haired boy stepped closer to her; "you have twice as many songs as the rest of us combined, and you never make a single mistake. You're awesome."

"Oh, stop it," she grinned. "I honestly don't know what I'm doing anymore. I just go back to practice room with Mom-ko and hope for the best."

"Isn't that boring sometimes?" said Rin somewhere above their heads. She was sitting on the scaffolding about 7 feet above ground level.

"No," Miku replied. "Should it?"

"Maybe. I mean, what about the moment? What about being spontaneous?"

"Oh, you mean smashing expensive guitars and getting away with it?"

The twin sticked her tongue at Miku. "I told you, it felt good at that moment. And people liked it too!"

"You know, whatever. Come down before your legs become the next thing you break." Miku smiled. The two girls were usually fighting like this for fun; they didn't really mean it.

"So, um," Kaito said quietly, making her look at him again; "wanna get a drink? We've got some time to spare."

"Thanks, but I'll pass. I just wanna hit the shower as soon as I can," she explained.

"And the guitar wasn't expensive, you know?" Rin shouted from the ladder. "It was like a 500 dollar piece of wood."

"How much is that in yen?" Miku asked.

"About 55,000," said Kaito.

"Dammit, Rin, that's like... Six or seven people who bought the tickets basically payed for that guitar, and you just wreck it into bits." She crossed her arms and watched the blond girl approach them. "How do you sleep?"

"Oh, I sleep well, and you know why? Because I don't worry about every little detail in life, unlike _somebody_ I know," Rin replied with her arms crossed too.

"I'm glad 55,000 yen is a 'little detail' to you, you upstart brat."

"Well _you're_ a fucking prude!"

The girls started at each other for a second before bursting into laughter.

"Okay, now that we've got _that_ out of the way," Miku said, "I really have to go take a shower. I'll catch up with you guys later."

She hugged with Rin briefly; Kaito was looking at her kind of disappointed, so Miku giggled and gave him a hug too. Then, she waved and walked away.

* * *

"You girls are crazy, you know that?" Kaito said to Rin and looked after their friend as she was getting lost in the distance.

"Hey, Kaito," the twin asked and tucked on his sleeve; "did I hear you right? You were asking Miku to get a drink with you?"

"Um, maybe?" he replied and blushed just a little bit.

"Well how come you didn't ask me too?" Rin whined. "I don't wanna be left out!"

Kaito ruffled her hair; she only managed to groan and tolerated it with a martyred expression. "You're too young for that stuff."

"Hey, I'm mature enough! Fuck!" she retorted defiantly.

He laughed and turned around to walk away. "Swearing doesn't make you appear more mature. If anything, it makes you appear more stupid."

"You take that back!" Rin took a few quick steps to catch up to Kaito.

"Will you take that word back?"

"Fine, I take it the fuck back."

He snorted again. "I changed my mind, _you_ are the insane one."

"Hmph," she replied. "At least you didn't call me cute this time."

"The evening's not over, cutie pie," said Kaito, and Rin punched him in the elbow.

"Why does everyone take me for the cute one, anyway?" she complained.

"Weeell," he thought for a second; "have you ever seen puppies playing?"

"No." Judging from her tone, Rin might have as well said 'Finish this comparison and you're dead.'

"What I'm saying is, when little puppies play, they're basically preparing for adulthood. They fight, bite each other in the neck, but they're too small to really hurt one another. And the way they pretend to be big and dangerous, well... it's adorable. Like, they're trying hard, but they don't really know how to adult."

Rin blinked. "Why do you know so much about puppies?"

"Of course _that's_ what you take from that," Kaito sighed. "I dunno, I spend a lot of time on the internet, I guess."

"Yeah, sitting backstage waiting for your one song, right?"

It was true. With Miku being the main attraction of the whole show, the others didn't get as much space. But surprisingly enough, this setup wasn't entirely the management's initiation.

One of the many unique features of the show was that the songs were written by fans; everyone and anyone had an opportunity to create another hit. Most people did so only out of love and respect for the Vocaloids and the opportunity to be proud that their song in particular, out of thousands of others, was chosen to be performed on stage. Ultimately, what this meant was that when the setlists were planned, the managers could literally pick 30 of the best songs which were ever created for this occasion, which was the reason behind the genre variability of the shows as well as the high level of artistic experience.

Somehow, Miku became the Vocaloids' flagship. The fans fell in love with her more than any of her colleagues, and so the most songs were being written for her. The management soon realised that promoting the show basically as 'Miku and friends' was the smartest decision business-wise, which only resulted in the others not having to work as much the main star -and not spending as much time in the spotlight.

Kaito smiled. "Do you think I regret anything?"

"You tell me," Rin replied.

In the meantime, the two of them arrived to the so called 'living room'. The actual changing rooms were reduced to small de-constructable booths literally next to the stage for time saving purposes; however, the singers always had one room reserved backstage for relaxing and preparing for their acts. Len was there, lying on a sofa and looking into his phone.

"You know what, I don't really mind," Kaito continued. "I get to be with Miku... and all of you guys all the time. I wouldn't get the chance to meet such amazing friends if it weren't for my 'one song' every night."

"That's one of the sweetest things I heard you say all day," Luka's soft voice responded. She was sitting behind the open door reading a book on audio engineering; she already changed from her complicated costume and was dressed in plain jeans and a red vest.

"Hi!" Rin said to her. "Sweetest? You should have heard Kaito when he was talking to Mikmmph," she failed to finish the sentece because Kaito swiftly covered her mouth with his hand and held her so she couldn't escape. She struggled like a trout on a hook, but her friend was too strong for her.

"You can let her go, Kaito, I know," said Luka without any expression whatsoever. "It's really obvious when you're paying attention."

Len lifted his head and looked at them. "What? What's obvious?"

His twin mumbled something into Kaito's palm and made a heart with her fingers.

"Oh, that." The pale boy turned his attention back towards his phone.

"Come on, guys!" Kaito finally let go of Rin; she giggled, ran towards the sofa and flopped next to her brother's feet. "How do you all know?"

"Okay," Luka closed her book loudly. "First of all, I could make a tomato soup out of your face right now. If that doesn't give it away, I don't know what does."

The twins laughed.

"And second," she continued, stood up and looked into Kaito's eyes; "it's been going on for months. You may not say anything to anyone, Kaito, but we can see what Miku does to you. Including that," she added as her friend smiled at the mention of their turqoise colleague.

"Okay, but can we please drop it now? It's not something I want to discuss," he said, a little bit upset now. Rin has already lost all interest in the topic whatsoever and was poking her brother in his waist; Len was trying hard to ignore her.

"Honey, I don't think it's healthy to let it all boil inside you," said Luka. "I don't want to push you, but if you ever change your mind, you know I'm here for you, right?"

"Yeah, I know. And thanks," he sighed.

"Cut it out," Len groaned at his sister. She giggled and kept on provoking him until he jumped up with a mouthful of curses and fought back. The twins turned into a laughing and, in Rin's instance, squeaking tornado of limbs.

"Well, my point still stands," Kaito commented on the situation amusedly. "I'm glad I have you all in my life."


	2. Ch 2 - Free Time

**CHAPTER 2: Free Time**

Usually the whole ensemble would be stuffed into buses at about 1 AM and sleep on the way to another show; blessed be the bus drivers, the unspoken heroes of the crew who would sleep through the evening to be fresh and ready for an all-night drive.

However, there were 2 days to spare before the next concert in Osaka, and the management decided to let everyone spend one night in a hotel with actual comfortable beds for a change. Sleeping in the bus, even with bunks installed, wasn't exactly the definition of 'comfort' and they usually spent at least 2 additional hours in hotel beds in the afternoon anyway, so this was a great opportunity to get as much rest as they could.

Much to her surprise and discontent, Luka just couldn't fall asleep. She was rolling in her bed for half an hour after which she wasn't any more sleepy than before. Annoyed and pretty much awake, she sat up and turned on the lamp on her night stand. She looked at her phone; it was 1:45.

All hotel rooms looked the same to her: tiny apartments with a bathroom, a tv screen and two beds. Luka shared the room with Meiko, but she wasn't there. The pink-haired singer thought she was probably at the hotel bar downstairs.

Luka got up from her bed and pulled out her suitcase. She dug deep into it and eventually pulled out a fluffy white dressing gown which she put on over her purple pajamas. She then opened her backpack and with absolute certainty pulled out a lighter and a half-empty pack of strawberry cigarettes. Smoking was, quite naturally, prohibited inside the hotel, except for the bar; but she knew there was an open balcony at the end of their floor, and that was where she was headed.

She walked slowly through the empty and silent corridor. Her steps were the only sound echoing through the environment, except for a rather loud snoring coming from one of the rooms. Luka grinned for herself; the noise was really absurd in the emptiness.

At the balcony, she lit one cigarette and looked down at the city. Despite the late hour, there were quite a few cars still driving by down there. The neon lights were shining into the night, creating their own constellations. In the distance, Luka could see the arena where their show took place only a few hours ago.

If only people knew everything that was going on behind the stage, she thought and sighed. Too many of their fans just viewed them as de-humanised figures who only existed for their performance. They didn't realise they were all ordinary people like everyone else, only a little more famous. Every one of them was going through their own problems, they too had feelings that could be hurt...

Like poor Kaito. He was desperately in love with Miku and he wanted to hide it from everyone as long as he could, most of all Miku herself. Luka wasn't entirely sure what his plan was, but it looked like he was too shy or embarassed to discuss this with his love interest and was waiting for Miku to confess about her feelings first.

Perhaps he knew deep down that she didn't feel the same way, at least as far as Luka knew. Waiting quietly and hoping for an opportunity was the only thing Kaito could do in this situation, unless he wanted to completely screw things up between him and Miku.

Luka felt sorry for him. She really liked him and wished nothing more for him than to be happy -and with things being the way they were, happiness was a rather difficult goal for him to achieve. That was why she was as friendly to him as she could: she wanted Kaito to see that he's not all alone in this, and that there was more to life than just praising Miku.

Speaking of whom... Miku was almost at the opposite side for Luka. She didn't literally _hate_ her, but... Sometimes it was hard to look at her back constantly. Everything seemed to be about her all the time. She was the real star, the rest of them were only there for the heck of it. Luka wasn't entirely sure why the management didn't kick them all out yet and only do exclusive Miku shows.

And she wasn't one to keep complaining about it, so she didn't have any real answers to why is the show set the way it was, except for "We do it for the fans."

A set of footsteps was getting closer to the balcony. Luka didn't turn around; she thought the hotel personell might be coming to clean up.

She was all the more surprised when immediately after the glass door opened behind her, two women started to laugh quietly. Luka turned her head; in the weak yellow light of the lamp above the door, she recognised the faces of none other than Meiko and Naomi, one of the sound assistants, a small being with short black hair. Both girls were only dressed in t-shirts which were barely long enough to cover their underpants.

"Good evening, Luka!" Meiko greeted her and walked onto the balcony like nothing was out of the ordinary. Naomi followed her a bit more hesitantly, but still giggling.

"Hey," Luka replied with a faint smile. "What's so funny, may I ask?"

"Nothing, really. It's just that Nao didn't want to bother with dressing up, and I was telling her, what if someone sees us?" And they laughed again. Naomi lifted her own pack of cigarettes and offered them to Meiko before she took one out herself. "What are you doing here? Or up, I should say."

"I couldn't sleep. It's the strangest thing, I think my back actually misses the bus bunk."

"Old habits die hard, I guess," Meiko shrudded and took a lighter from Naomi. "Then again, we didn't exactly get much sleep so far either, teehee."

"Hang on, I think I'm missing the point," said Luka. "What were you doing?"

"None of your business," Meiko replied, and they both chuckled in such a way that everything was instantly clear to the pink-haired girl. She felt blood rush into her face, and a thorn of uncomfortable awkwardness pierced her heart.

"Oh, okay. Um. Sorry," she stuttered. "You know, I could have guessed something like this when I didn't see you in your bed, Mei."

"Well," Naomi finally spoke up with her soft and quiet voice; "I may or may not have requested my own solo room for tonight..."

"I see." Luka who's initial cigarette was long gone lit another one. "I'm sorry, gals, this just caught me completely off guard."

"It's fine. We've been careful not to leave any clues," said Meiko.

"How long has this been going on, anyway?"

"God... Must be two months now, is it?" she asked and looked at her apparent girlfriend Naomi who nodded.

"Two months? Wow, you're really sneaky if none of us noticed for so long," the singer smiled. "Unless someone knew and didn't tell me, of course. Which is unlikely."

Once again the two of them laughed; apparently they were in a good mood tonight.

"No, we keep it a secret from everybody. Well, we managed so far," Naomi added and her wide eyes turned at Luka. "Please don't tell anyone?"

She smiled. "Of course not. If you want it to remain a secret, than it stays so."

"Thanks, you're the best!" said Meiko with a wide grin. "I know we can rely on you, with how well you're protecting Kaito from everybody."

Luka breathed out. "Well, since everyone knows _that_ , I think we can agree that Kaito is terrible at hiding his feelings."

"Cut him some slack, I think he has never fallen in love until he met Miku." Meiko turned around, leaned towards the railing and looked at the city below them, unwillingly sticking her white panties out at her companions. Luka quickly looked the other way while Naomi giggled like a little girl.

"Besides, that's not the point," she continued. "I mean, it's because of you that noone dares to pick on him."

"Is that so? Who would make fun of someone for being in love?"

"The twins, for example. Well," Meiko turned back around; "to be fair, Len probably doesn't give two shits, but you know how Rin is."

"Yup." Luka recalled Rin's silly behavior which she resorted to every time there were more than two people in the room. Either she was hyperactive as hell, or just desperate for attention. And it wasn't like she held any grudges against Kaito, either; for all Luka knew, he was like a big brother to Rin -that being one of the reasons why she usually picked on him more than the rest of her colleagues, with the possible exception of her actual brother. But sometimes her words hurt more than she realised, and there were a couple of times when Luka had to set her straight.

"I don't think the twins should have joined us in such young age," she said out lout. "You can tell that they both need their parents. For things like that."

"Things like what?" Meiko asked. Naomi walked towards her and laid her head on her shoulder with eyes closed.

"Like teaching Rin to be more considerate of others," Luka explained. " _We_ know she's just messing around, but one of these days she'll end up actually hurting someone. And people thinking she's a mean bitch is the last thing I wish for her."

"Well, you just kind of confirmed what I said back there," Meiko smiled at her. "You have these things figured out, that's why people respect you. Even Rin."

"You think so?"  
"Absolutely! Come on, you're the only one she'll listen to, in case you haven't noticed. You wanted to give her a mother?" She snickered. "You're the best for the job."

"Yeah, I bet I must be a _wonderful_ mom," said Luka and waved her near-finished cigarette in the air. "But honestly, my mom did the same thing. Used to hit me for cursing and stuff like that, but that didn't stop her from doing it herself."

"Yes, parenting is a little bit hypocritical, don't you think?" Meiko hugged Naomi with her free arm.

"Hey, do you think I'm being a bad influence to Rin?" Luka suddenly asked as she threw the cigarette butt off to the bin by the wall.

"I thought we just established the opposite?"

"I know, but I'm not exactly being a saint around her, either. Miku told me the other day that we should at least try to keep our own adult stuff from the twins."

"Well, she's not wrong, I guess. Honey," Meiko adressed her girlfriend who was still lying on her; "if you fall asleep here, I will _not_ carry you to the bed."

"Bzz," said Naomi and straightened her head.

"Go to sleep. I'll be there in a few," Meiko smiled and gave her a kiss. Naomi nodded, caressed her cheek and moved towards the glass door.

"G'night, Luuuka," she mumbled when she was passing the pink-haired girl.

Luka laughed. "You too."

"I hope we're not making you too uncomfortable," Meiko apologised when the door closed behind Naomi.

"Not at all."

"Really? 'cause I could have sworn you couldn't bear loking at us."

"Well," Luka hesitated; "I just wanted to respect your privacy."

"Oh please, there's nothing private about two people kissing. It's totally natural."

"If you say so."

"You sound like you're not very fond of this kinda stuff." Meiko winked. "Is there not a possible mister Megurine with whom you'd like to do this?"

"Nope. And for all I care, there might never be one, either."

"Heeey," she grinned. "You haven't even kissed anyone before, have you?"

Luka blushed a little and looked to the side. "I have. Once. We were drunk and it was awful."

"Oh." Her smile faded. "Sorry."

"Don't be. I don't even remember most of it anymore, even his face." Luka yawned. "Well, I think I'm gonna go to bed too."

"Yeah, just one more thing, before you go." Meiko walked closer to her. "I know you're having doubts about this whole thing we're doing and your role in it... I just wanted to tell you that I think you're essential for the show. Well, not the 'show', but to all of us."

"Well that came out of nowhere," she rose her eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, the thing that we talked about before? That's just as important as being good on stage. People don't throw shit at each other because of you." Meiko patted her on the shoulder. "You keep us together, and we're happy that you're with us."

"Okay, it's way too late for me to start crying, so I'm gonna stop you right there," said Luka with laughter. "Thanks."

"You're welcome," she replied and hugged her briefly. "Come on now, let's go get some sleep."

Soon, Luka was back in her bed, thinking about what Meiko told her. She liked the sound of it: she kept them all together. It wasn't deliberate, she was just trying to be her normal friendly self, like she believed anyone should.

The Vocaloids were a solid school of life to her. When they began doing this together, Luka soon realised that people can appear really complicated on the outside, but she was always willing to make the effort and really get to know them. It was like solving puzzles. Once she understood how her colleagues 'worked', so to speak, it was much easier to be friends with them all. And have an influence on Rin, apparently.

Maybe she really should be more careful around her. Miku was right: Luka, along with some other older members of the group, never had any problems with smoking, drinking and cursing in the youngling's presence. It didn't occur to her before what image does this leave in someone as suggestible as Rin.

Then again, Len seemed to be a lot more reasonable in this matter. His sister probably didn't take him too seriously, or else he'd definitely be able to talk some sense into her.

Luka fidgeted in the bed. She did have some small regrets about lying to Meiko. She actually remembered everything about her first kiss. She was never too much of a relationship person and, on top of that, has been focusing on her career since she started singing. Because of that, it only happened right before her 20th birthday.

The ensemble resided just outside of Sapporo at the time, working on a few new songs and choreographies before the upcoming short tour. Luka remembered those sessions particularly because that was when she confessed to Meiko that she took some ballet classes as a child; they utilised that skill in the dance routine for Dreaming Chu Chu. Everything was done two or three days before her birthday and the show wouldn't start until two weeks later, so she decided to celebrate it on their last evening in the studio. Four hours later, Luka's world was rotating unnaturaly fast. And that actually made the two of them that evening.

They went outside to take a walk. It was in the middle of the night, and even if they met someone, their show wasn't that big enough yet so chances were they wouldn't have been recognised. When they found a playground, Luka climbed up the monkey bars with a childish laughter, only to find out that she didn't know how to come back to the ground. He reached out to her and helped her down. As they were standing there, half hugging, they somehow just looked into each other's eyes, and before their numb, spinning heads even realised that it was happening...

No, she remembered it; and it was just another one of those secrets that she was willing to hide from everyone. Not that it was anyone's business in the first place, but things were simply easier if it stayed between the two of them.

Nobody needed to know that she kissed Kaito.


	3. Ch 3 - Sand Planet

**CHAPTER 3: Sand Planet**

A couple of days later, on an early afternoon, a dispute regarding the previous night's show burst out on the bus.

Their tour bus -one dedicated to the six Vocaloids themselves -consisted of three small "rooms". Right behind the driver's cabin, separated from the rest of the bus by an additional wall so that the singers would have some more privacy, was a lounging and working area with a few tables and sofas and various laptops, books and unfinished snacks usually lying about here and there. Behind this living room was a tiny kitchen through which one could squeeze to the bedroom, consisting of two bunk beds on either side of the bus, making a total of eight beds. Two of them, however, were usually unoccupied, although sometimes they came in handy when some of the band members, for example, stayed up partying with the singers after a show. The management didn't really approve of such casual bed arrangement, but had given up trying to keep everyone in line long ago.

The Vocaloids, too, would sometimes end up in different buses. On this particular day, Meiko stayed behind in the crew bus after what was apparently a long and wild night. Therefore, only five people were on the bus, except for the two drivers in the front. Len and Luka were asleep, Kaito was sitting in the front and was writing something on his computer. Miku and Rin were not only wide awake, but also in the middle of an argument.

"Rin," Miku asked as she was slowly but surely running out of patience; "Can you _please_ take it more seriously?"

"Who fucking cares?" The twin retorted. She was lying on a bottom bunk and trying to balance a glass of lemonade on her belly; the yellow liquid was shaking softly as it copied the bouncing of the bus. "It's just an act."

" _I_ care." Miku crossed her arms. "If it's an act, it has to be believable. People who have any sort of insight into music will laugh at you."

"Screw that, people come to our shows to party, not to look at your fingers when you _pretend_ to play the guitar. Or bass."

"So what, do you think we have those guitars just to look good? Because if that's the case, we can just smash them against the ground at the beginning. Oh, that's right," she added mockingly; "You already did that."

Rin threw her feet off the bed and sat up; it was a miracle that she remembered to keep the glass upright.

"What is your problem? If you want to be a perfectionist dickhead, be my guest. But don't force me to do the same!"

"My problem," Miku unconsciously began to rise her voice, "is that when I'm doing something, I wanna do it correctly. You, on the other hand, don't care about anything except what's convenient for you, and that's pathetic!"

"People don't give a shit!" Rin shouted and waved her arms in the air in a desperate effort to make her friend understand her point. "People dance and yell and sing and fucking enjoy themselves! All they want to see is that your pretty face gives them the fun times that they want!"

"And you call yourself a professional? We have a responsibility, and you can't just ignore it because you think you know better!"

" _Ladies,_ " Luka spoke up loudly above their heads. Her angry face emerged from the depths of her bunk. "Cut it out! You're both being stubborn and ridiculous."

"Just tell me that I'm wrong!" Miku replied to her.

"I don't care who's right or wrong, you can solve this later and quietly."

"Whatever. I'll be in the front," said Rin, stood up and walked away.

Miku shook her head. "I don't believe this. You're really defending-"

"Shut the hell up already," Luka groaned. "It's not so important that you have to be so fucking annoying about it. So calm down and let the management decide how to handle Rin's performance."

"Fine," Miku spat out and stormed away all the way to the back of the bus where she collapsed on one of the spare beds. More than anything, she wanted to go outside and take a long walk alone, but there was no escape from the bus until it stopped.

She was breathing heavily, trying to push all her emotions deep down, preferably into a botomless pit from which they'd never find their way back. She wasn't willing to admit it in front of the others, at least not immediately, but she thought that she might actually have been a little bit too harsh on Rin. Miku had been in a particularly bad mood for the last couple of days, and what was driving her even more crazy was that she had no idea why.

Or did she? What the twin told her made Miku think about some things that were bothering her. _"All they want to see is that your pretty face gives them the fun times that they want,"_ or however she said it. Unbeknownst to Rin, Miku was actually upset about it: if this theory was correct, then everyone she loved and worked with had been reduced to a tool of entertainment. Like animals in a circus, trained to do the same acts evening after evening regardless of their feelings.

Of course, she sighed, this was their job description; maybe it was stupid to complain about it. But the repetitive nature and routine weren't the problem, at least for herself -Rin, on the other hand, apparently hated to be restricted like that. But what troubled Miku was that noone in the audience, at least that she knew of, cared about what kind of people the Vocaloids were when they left the stage. She felt that the fans were dehumanising them.

That was why it hurt when Rin said that -the thought that nobody really cares about them. About her.

And this was something that she didn't want anyone to know. She feared that if people knew about the doubts she had about herself, they might start taking her even less seriously than they did at the moment, according to her. Miku didn't want to appear weak. It was hard enough to deal with this weakness on her own.

The turqoise girl glimpsed over to her left side. Her iPod was lying there, wrapped in a chubby ball that were her earphones. She vaguely remembered carelessly throwing it on the bed the night before when she was changing into her nightdress. It was stacked with a bunch of demos sent by the fan producers -the management wanted her to go through them and pick a few that she'd like to add to the setlist in the future.

She breathed out again and reached for the iPod. She might as well get it over with now, she thought; maybe it would distract her a bit.

It soon turned out Miku was not at all in the mood for listening to new songs. The first two she could bear to listen from start to finish, but she eventually started to skip the other songs after the beginning. All of them sounded like happy dance crap to her; she might be interested in some of them any other day, but at that moment, she didn't want to pick any tunes that would have had her pretend that everything is fine when it wasn't.

And then, all of a sudden, one particularly fluffy beat has been replaced by moody piano accompanied by an indistinct phrase repeated by a creepy pitch shifted voice which reminded her of an ugly robot thing that she saw in one of the Daft Punk's music videos a few months back.

The change of pace immediately caught Miku's attention and she listened more carefully. This song was completely different from all the others up to that point. It had a more serious sound, the lyrics were much more mature -Miku had almost exclusively been singing about happy girly things so far, all those little things like love, friendship and candy. This song, though... It felt like it has been written by someone who understood the feelings which she has been dealing with at the moment.

Miku looked at the screen of her iPod. The title of the song was Sand Planet. She almost smiled; she had to remember _this_ name.

* * *

"Miku?" said Luka and peeked over the edge of her bunk. The turqoise girl was lying on one of the beds in the back with earphones on and didn't react; either she didn't hear her, or at least pretended so. Luka shrugged; she didn't want to talk to her _that_ much anyway. She only wanted to check on Miku if she was still upset, but the star apparently didn't want to be disturbed.

The young woman climbed down and walked to the front in hopes to find herself a strong cup of coffee. She found Kaito and Rin looking into the boy's laptop, watching some video by the looks and sounds of it. Luka smiled at them and leaned forward to see what the two friends were watching.

"Out of all the series in the world," she smirked, "you're watching Pokemon? I thought your standards were a bit higher."

"Well, _Rin_ is watching," Kaito specified and rolled his eyes. "I'm just accompanying her out of solidarity."

"Speaking of standards," said Rin in a colorless tone; "can you please stop shaking your cans in front of my face?"

Luka looked down; her loose T shirt was indeed showing a lot more in this angle than she intended. She narrowed her back and felt blood rush into her face.

Rin laughed, and she couldn't help but join her. Kaito was suddenly very interested in the bus window on the opposite wall and his head wasn't far from the same color as Luka's.

"Coffee," she remembered and turned over to the coffee maker on a nearby counter, partially because she was looking for an excuse to stop looking in her friends' faces. "You guys want some?"

"Nah, I'm good," Rin replied joyfully. "Maybe an icy cold shower for Kaito over he _eeee!_ "

The sudden noises were telling Luka that the blue boy probably proceeded to tickle the twin for her cheekiness.

"Why can't the world be always like this?" she sighed. "You're such lovable dorks."

Rin escaped Kaito's reach, ran towards her and tried to tickle her too.

"Suit yourself, but I'm not ticklish," Luka said and finished tinkering with the coffee maker like nothing out of the ordinary was happening. The liquids inside were slowly beginning to bubble and steam; a tall white cup with a microphone symbol on it stood at the bottom of the contraption, waiting to be filled.

"Like, at all?"

"Mostly," she confirmed with an evil grin.

Rin stomped back to the sofa and sat down with her arms crossed. "You're fucking lame."

"Watch your mouth!" Kaito and Luka rebuked her at the same time.

Everyone looked at each other and the sides of their mouth were twitching. Then, they all burst out laughing again.

"You're like my parents, you know that?" said Rin, and her eyes and her smile both widened impishly. "I think it's about time you two should get married!"

"Oh shush, you silly," Luka disagreed and looked at the blue boy. "We would make an awful couple, don't you think?"

"Ugh, the worst!" he said. "Spending the entire weekend at home watching TV series that are _actually interesting,_ " he winked at Rin; _"-_ instead of going out with friends..."

"Yeah, and going to lame mainstream romantic places for vacation, like Paris..."

"...sending everyone we know pictures of ourselves with the Eiffel Tower just so our friends would see how awesome our relationship is..."

"...while in reality we argue about small things that don't really matter, like who's parents should we visit first on Christmas..."

"Hey, hold on, sweetheart," Kaito stood up smiling like the Sun itself; "my parents are older, they deserve to see us first."

"Yeah, _honey_ , but my parents actually like seeing us," Luka acceded to his little game. "Your old grumpy folks hate me, you know that!"

"Hey, don't say things like that about my family!"

"I knew it! You love your parents more than you love me!"

"Um, no offence, but they were here for me ever since I was born -a few months before that, even. I've only known _you_ for like a year."

"And yet we have a 14-year-old daughter!" she lamented and reached out to Rin who was laughing her butt off in the corner. Despite her protests, Luka wrapped her forearms around the girl's neck. "You're a terrible husband _and_ father!"

"Stop it already, you two!" The twin was hardly able to catch her breath. "I'm gonna die of laughter!"

"The point is," Luka said and let her go, "we're not made for each other. At all."

Rin was about to say something smart, but at that moment, the bus driver's cabin opened and Takumi, the "co-pilot", peeked into the room.

"Just to let you guys know," he said with a nod, "we'll be arriving in about 15 minutes. The crew bus jerks left us behind on the highway, so they're there already."

"Thanks," Luka smiled at him. Takumi saluted with a smirk and disappeared back in the cabin.

Rin snorted. "I bet Meiko rushed them so that she can spend some more time with her boyfriend before we're there."

"Boyfriend?" Kaito blinked. Luka remained silent, only turned around and took her coffee which has in the meantime finished preparing. It was a perfect opportunity not to look her friends in their faces.

"Yeah! She's been hanging out with the crew a lot lately, I think she's dating one of them!" The twin's eyes were shining. "Who do you think it is? I'm guessing Sammy."

"I'd rather drop it if I were you," said Luka with a forced neutral expression. "Kaito, would you mind telling the guys in the back that we're about to get off? Len's asleep and... well, Miku might be still pissed at us."

"Oh yeah, Rin told me." The boy stood up. "I'll check on her."

"I'll be right there, I just have to finish this before we stop," she beckoned him with the cup in her hand. Kaito walked away; Luka sat down next to his laptop where that atrocity of a cartoon was just finishing.

Rin scooped closer to her and laid her head on her shoulder.

"What?" she asked.

"Why can't Kaito be in love with you, Luka?" the twin said in response. "I'd like you as my mom more than Miku."

Luka chuckled. "Why? Aren't you best friends?"

"I guess, but... She's been acting a little fu- a little weird lately." Rin looked at her. "She's got it tough, I know. But she's really getting on my nerves."

"Just try and be a little more patient with her, will you?" she advised her. "You can't solve anything when you're both just throwing shit at each other."

The blonde girl sighed. "Patience was never my strength."

* * *

Miku has put her iPod aside a few moments ago and rubbed her eyes. She's calmed down almost enough to get up and apologise to Rin, but she was still too lazy to actually do that. And her self-doubting thoughts weren't exactly urging her to interact with other people either. So she was still on her back, staring at the bottom of the bed above her and trying to organise her brain.

"Hey." Kaito approached her and sat down next to her. "Takumi said we're stopping soon, you might wanna get ready."

She smiled at him faintly. "Thank you."

The blue boy hesitated. "Rin told me you guys had a fight."

"Yes, we did."

"How are you doing?"

Miku breathed out. "Better, I guess. I don't know why I'm so short-tempered lately. Maybe it's because..." She blinked. "Ah, forget it."

"What? What's wrong?"

She stayed quiet for a couple of seconds, looking at the wall. Kaito was watching her patiently.

"Maybe," she continued eventually; "maybe it's because I'm realising that noone really cares about me."

"Hey, that's not true!" Miku felt his hand softly caressing her shoulder. She turned her head; Kaito had a sweet smile for her. "I care! And so does everybody else."

"Thank you for saying that, but I'm not so sure about it."

"You don't trust me?"

"I trust _you_ , Kaito. It's everyone else that I'm questioning." She shook his hand off of her as she sat up next to him. "Noone else cares about what I have to say, I feel like I'm only here because I can 'sing' or whatever. I feel all alone."

Kaito gave her a hug; she wrapped her arms around his neck and closed her eyes. This was just the right kind of first aid that she needed at the moment, and he evidently understood that.

"You're not alone," he spoke up quietly. "We all care about you, even when we don't show it sometimes."

"Thank you." Miku squeezed him tightly one more time before letting go. "Okay, I'm gonna start picking up my stuff now."

"Of course." Kaito stood up. "I'll talk to you later then."

When she was winding up her earphones, she heard him shake with Len who has been asleep the entire time.

"Oh, hey," the twin mumbled. "Did I miss anything?"


	4. Ch 4 - Make Way For Better Things

**CHAPTER 4: Make Way For Better Things**

It was raining outside -but it was that kind of irritating, sort of incomplete rain. Tiny malevolent drops of water were falling lazily from the sky, covering the entire city in a mist that seemed to be able to get through anything except concrete walls. One could either dress too much an be incredibly sweaty, or not enough and catch a cold.

Rin found a room at the top floor of the venue where their show was taking place that evening. The floor was empty except for a bunch of chairs by one of the walls. She didn't know if this was a conference room or just a place where things that have no use get thrown into and forgotten.

Not that she cared at that moment. She was lying on her back in the middle of the room, staring at the dark ceiling above her and listening to the rain outside. She wore a black hoodie from the Miku merch, the first piece of clothing she could find that would keep her warm. Plus the hoodie was really snuggly on touch; Rin was wondering how cozy would it feel to cuddle with someone else wearing it.

Someone like Ichiro, preferably. But he was off the table now.

Obviously everyone left something or someone behind when the Vocaloids began to consume too much of their time. Ichiro was Rin's... What even was he? She felt 'boyfriend' wouldn't be too accurate. She liked him, and he liked her. They used to be a lethal duo, often wandering freely through the school when they were thirteen, making sarcastic remarks about anyone they met, teaming up any time there was any kind of group activity with their friends, and they got along really well -maybe a little too well for two friends.

And he was her first kiss, too. It wasn't anything special at that moment, Ichiro basically dared her to give him a smooch one lazy afternoon. But there _was_ a certain level of chemistry between them, and who knew what could have happened next if only the twins wouldn't leave soon afterwards.

Rin never realised just how much she's going to miss him until they were hundreds of miles apart. They tried to stay in touch at first, but the longer they hadn't seen each other, the harder it was to keep their relationship alive, whatever its true nature was. Eventually, they stopped trying at all.

And then, all of a sudden, Ichiro would post crazy love confessions and pictures with some stupid, ugly human being with long black hair and stubby legs.

Okay, that wasn't an entirely honest depiction that Rin gave her, but she was obviously upset about it. This stranger girl was stealing _her_ Ichiro; and knowing that all that the two of them went through together in the past suddenly didn't mean anything...

 _Oh my gosh, this is what a broken heart feels like, isn't it?_ She asked herself and with her typical dark sense of humor smiled faintly. _Would you look at yourself, Rin. You're a big girl now._

She stood up. Rin wanted to move; no matter where to, how long, how far, she needed to walk. She almost considered going jogging -something she definitely did very often to stay in shape, maybe even once every month -but the weather wasn't right (it never was).

She briefly stopped by her backpack in the living room and picked up her phone and her wallet. She was as quick and as quiet as she could; trying to disappear mere hours before the show was irresponsible and everyone she'd meet would try to talk her out of it, which was the last thing she wanted to go through.

As she was sneaking down the corridor looking for the emergency exit, Rin only saw Kaito leaning towards a wall and smiling his ass off while he was talking to Miku. The twin smirked and avoided their attention by taking a turn left -coincidentally to a door leading outside.

There, as soon as the door closed behind her, she took a deep breath, lifted her face and let the raindrops softly kiss her skin. Rin didn't realise it before, but this was what she needed for quite some time. There was just her, alone, without all the work, fame, and bizzare lifestyle. The kind of Rin that has been more or less asleep inside of her for the last year.

Was she really so different back then? -the twin asked herself while she walked through a back alley; their buses and a few trucks stood in the distance with a few people running around the vehicles. Rin cautiously pulled the hood over her head in case somebody noticed her.

There was an open gate ahead, but she learned that it's been guarded by two very big guys -lucky for her, they were only looking outside. She probably could just tell them that she was leaving and they would let her pass -or, they could send her right back. Rin looked around and noticed a pile of boxes and other undisclosed garbage lying next to the wall to her right. Having just awakened her mischievous side, she decided to climb up over the wall and leave the area unnoticed.

Yes, _this_ was exactly what she and Ichiro would have done in a situation like this. Rin remembered the time when their school was being re-painted from an ugly red to even uglier yellow during the holiday; they had a scaffolding built up all the way to the roof and the workers were slowly tearing down the old facade. One evening, the two of them took the opportunity to climb up to the roof which was impossible to reach from the inside, unless they acquired a key from the principal or the janitor, both of whom were grumpy old men who would not give away their keys for any student under any circumstance.

That didn't matter, though, because Ichiro and Rin managed to get there without them. And there they were walking, running, jumping, or cartwheeling around until they simply sat on the edge, their legs dangling in the air, and watched the streets around them fall into the night. There was a tiny cabin on the roof which was covering the staircase down into the depths of the school; before they left, Ichiro pulled a black marker from his pocket and drew their initials in a heart on the cabin's wall.

"That's lame," Rin told him, but she was quite happy at that moment.

"Maybe," he shrugged. "But at least everyone will know now that you and me, we own this school."

 _Let's see if you can remember that when you climb there with that stupid fucking bitch of yours,_ the present Rin thought when she walked aimlessly through the streets, hands in her pockets, the black hood over her head, and little Miku printed on the back of her hoodie. She wondered if she could write him and ask what the hell happened; but that would probably be pointless. Whether she liked it or not, Ichiro was in the past for her. She moved on to become a superstar and he... apparently moved on to find another girl to fool around with.

The twin found herself on a bigger street with lots of traffic happening. She walked past the standing cars looking in their windows, and showed an evil grin if anyone inside noticed her. The people probably weren't too happy that this rude short girl was moving faster on foot than they were in their cars.

All of a sudden, a head on one of the backseats widened its eyes and beckoned her to come closer. Rin rose her eyebrows and approached the car, a small blue model unknown to her.

The window slowly opened and a barrage of excited voices could be heard.

"Oh my goood! It's really you, isn't it?" an irritating girl's voice asked her. Rin managed to remember her face when she got a better look on it: this was without a doubt Haruka, one of her old classmates. From what she recalled, she was always kind of dumb and overcompensated by flirting ferociously with every male that crossed her way. Rin never liked her.

"Haruka!" she screamed with joy and hugged the upper part of her torso which was now leaning from the window. "It's been a while, how are you?"

"Great! We're just going to your show!" the passenger replied and motioned to the front seats where other two girls, though a few years older than herself, were looking at the twin, one with a hyped expression, the other one -the driver -with a soft smile and tired eyes. "Remember my sister? And that's her friend, Sakura."

"Oh yeah!" said Rin who had no idea that Haruka had a sister. "Hi, I'm Rin!" she yelled into the car.

Everyone inside laughed. "Like you need to introduce yourself," Sakura, a chubby female with colored green hair and a silver piercing in her lip, told her. "We're probably your biggest fans!"

"Thank you, I appreciate that!"

"Yeah, we _would_ be looking forward to seeing you tonight if this mother-efing traffic moved soon!" Haruka's sister cursed and clenched the steering wheel tight. Rin liked her, she was the only one inside the car who wasn't losing her mind just because she saw someone famous.

"Trust me, you should park the car as soon as you can and walk the rest of the way," she advised her. "It's not far, maybe less than fifteen minutes."

"We'll see. What are you doing out here, anyway?"

"You know," Rin scratched her elbow; "just taking a walk before the madness begins." There was no way she was telling the entire truth.

"Really?" said Haruka. "I would never leave if I were you! You must have everything you could ever want, why would you leave that behind?"

The twin smiled sadly. "That's not true, really."

"What do you mean?"

She coughed and glanced over to the side. "Hey, the cars are moving. I should get going."

"Aw. Hey, how about we meet up after the show?" Haruka suggested.

"Yeah, and bring Miku with you! That'd be awesome!" Sakura added.

Rin grinned. "I'll see what I can do. No promises."

"Thanks! See you!" they shouted as their car started moving forward.

"Yeah, fuck you too," she muttered when the trio was gone.

They had no idea. Just like the rest of them. People thought that she and all her friends had perfect lives, were happy all the time and probably rolling in money. Furthermore, the way that the girls spoke to her made it seem like they saw the Vocaloids as little more than slaves whose sole purpose in life was to entertain others, the souls that weren't so fortunate to be famous for anything.

Ironically, Rin used to be just the same before she joined the show. She had thought everything was going to be just as simple -traveling across the globe, singing for her fans and enjoying the spotlight. The complexity of the real experience was surprising, to say the least. First of all, none of them stopped being normal people who thought for themselves. She, in fact, was thinking for herself the _most_ of them. She feared losing her identity now that after some time with the Vocaloids, it was obvious that it was exactly what could happen.

And if that wasn't enough, there were hours and hours of practising and debating over the course of the show itself; so much time seemingly wasted just for the twenty minutes on the stage, in Rin's case. She was preparing herself for a certain lifestyle, and when it became apparent that her fantasies do not match the reality for most part, she had a little trouble adapting. According to her, the others seemed to get used to it much easier -including her twin brother. And the fact that she was the only one undergoing a certain identity crisis felt... unfair.

The girl, still frowning, took her phone from her pocket to check the time. Her heart twitched: she had the sound turned off, and there were 4 missed calls -three from Miku, the other one from Luka.

Rin immediately thought that if she was in trouble, Miku is less likely to scold her, so she chose to dial her number. After a few seconds of beeping, her friend picked up the phone.

"Finally!" she called out, half with relief, half with anger. "Where the hell are you?"

"Heyyy," the twin answered. "I'm kinda, uh, outside."

"We figured, since you were literally nowhere to be found in here. But where exactly are you?"

"For fuck's sake, I don't know! Somewhere in the city. Nearby. And I'm fine," Rin retorted.

"You are definitely _not_ fine, Rin, half the crew is going to want you dead if you don't show up soon."

"Fine, geez. I'll be back soon, don't worry."

"Good. By the way, you should call Luka too, she went outside to look for you."

"Oh. Can't you call her instead?"

"Nope. Consider it your punishment." Miku snorted. "Listen, I gotta go. Come back asap, ok?"

"Yeah. See you then," she replied and hung up. Then, she looked around; she didn't see Luka anywhere near. Rin sighed and called her phone as she started moving slowly back towards the venue.

"Hello?" the older girl answered in a voice that could freeze the Sun.

"Hi. So, I already talked to Miku, I know you guys are pissed at me, and I'm coming back. Just wanted to let you know," the twin explained quickly.

"Great. Can you _find_ the way back?"

"Um..." Rin paused and tried to remember how did she get to the main street. "I... think so?"

Luka sighed. "Are you anywhere near a big street with weird animal shaped lamp posts?"

"No... wait," she hesitated and looked up. "Uh, yeah, actually. That looks kinda cool and fucked up at the same time."

"Yeah. What buildings do you see around?"

"Uuum... tall office buildings, mostly. There's a comic shop across the street."

"Okay. I think I should be nearby, I'll pick you up soon. Try not to move."

"Thanks," Rin said, but her friend already ended the call.

Five minutes later, Luka found her walking nervously in a circle on the corner of the street.

"Hi," the twin said.

"Hi. First of all," Luka smiled briefly, "I'm glad you're alright. Second, can you tell me what you were thinking, leaving like that and not telling anyone?"

"I know, I'm sorry!" she exclaimed. "I just... needed to get away. It's a rather long story."

"Well, perhaps you can explain it to me while we walk back," the pink girl suggested, but in her suggestion was a slight bit of demand.

And so, on their way back, Rin told her everything about Ichiro and her self doubts. Confusingly enough, Luka didn't look too surprised by this; more understanding than anything.

"You don't think I'm crazy?" she asked her when at the end.

"I do," Luka replied with laughter. "But, and I don't mean to sound like your mother, you're only fourteen. This stuff is normal."

"Somehow I doubt that everyone's going through the same things as me."

"Okay, it may be a little bit enhanced because of the life you have with us. But the principle remains the same. You're just now finding out who you really are, or rather who you want to be. And you loved someone and he's been taken away from you-"

"Taken away? More like stabbed me in the fucking back."

"Still. Shit happens." As they were walking side by side, Luka put her arm around the twin's shoulders. "You'll get through this, I swear."

"Thanks. I'll try." Rin was looking at the ground.

Her friend suddenly stopped. "Hey, I have an idea. This might cheer you up." She took her hand and pulled her behind her into one of the back streets.

"W-whoa, where are we going?"

"You'll see. When I was looking for you, I saw something which I immediately thought you would love. It's right there," she added and pointed in front of her. There was a tiny music shop ahead.

"First you rush me back, then you want me to stop here and look at... what exactly, anyway?" the confused girl said with a slight smile.

Luka didn't respond until they arrived to the front window.

"It just really reminds me of you," she said then.

Rin widened her eyes and stepped as close to the glass barrier as she could. There was an acoustic guitar on a stand to the far right; it was painted yellow, with a few black stripes across. The body seemed a tiny inch thinner compared to most other acoustic guitars. It had a single cutaway by the fretboard, and the headstock was shaped in the style of a stratocaster -with all six tuning knobs at one side and a typical curvy shape at the other. There was no company logo on it; instead, a black tattoo-ish mark was drawn at the top.

"Whooooa," she breathed out. "You were right. She's beautiful."

"She?"

"Yeah, all guitars are chicks, don't you know? At least that's what our guitarists say." Suddenly, she chuckled. "You shouldn't have brought me here, now I'll never want to leave."

"Looks like you found yourself a new love interest, huh?" Luka smiled, glad that her friend liked the instrument.

"Indeed! But..." The twin took out her wallet and looked inside; then she frowned. "I can't have it any more than I can have Ichiro right now."

The two girls stood there a little longer, looking at the guitar.

"You know what, screw it," Luka said eventually. "Let's go inside."

"What? Wait, are you...?" Rin asked in honest disbelief.

"Yeah! You deserve someone who'll never leave you and will always be there when you need him! Her. Whatever."

"You don't have to do this."

"I know." She walked right to the front window and picked the guitar up. "Don't you always want us all to be more spontaneous? Well, here we are."

And Rin took the yellow guitar in her perplexed hands.

"I can't let you just buy me this! How would you expect me to feel after that?"

"Don't worry, I won't give you anything for Christmas," Luka smirked and pulled out her wallet. "Just promise me you won't destroy this one, alright?"


	5. Ch 5 - The Light And The Shadow

__Sidenote: I would be eternally grateful if anyone reading this would be able to draw Rin with her new guitar. I have a picture of her on my mind, but I can't draw and it sucks. :D__

* * *

 ** **CHAPTER 5: The Light And The Shadow****

The following morning, Luka pulled Meiko into their bus kitchen to discuss an idea that has been running through her head the entire previous evening. Everyone else was asleep in the back -except for Rin who was playing with her new friend quietly. Said friend had six strings and a nice warm sound. The Kagamine girl spent most of the previous night rediscovering her abilities, for she hadn't played the guitar properly since she left home with the Vocaloids.

"What do you have in mind?" Meiko asked and chewed on her thick sandvich. She mastered the art of eating sandviches and similar contraptions without ever dropping a single piece of food inside. Luka admired her: whenever __she__ was eating a hamburger, most of it ended up anywhere within a three feet radius from her.

"I'm not suggesting a 'meet and greet' right away," she replied and held her hands over her steaming cup of coffee to keep them warm. "But we could break the fourth wall just a little bit. Like, coming out to meet the people who arrive early."

"How early?"

"You know, five or six hours? Those nuts that camp in front of the venue from early morning just so they could run to the front when the door opens."

Meiko smiled. "You wouldn't find __me__ among them, that's for sure."

"How come?"

"I've had my fair share of this craziness years ago," she explained. "People are able to go berserk at each other, and in the end you just stand there for several hours without any chance of stretching your legs, as long as you're not prepared to give up your spot. I'd rather just pay for a seat."

"You'll hear no arguments from me," Luka nodded and took a sip of her coffee. "But you can't deny that those people exist."

"And you wish to reward them for their dedication?"

"That's one way to look at it. But more importantly for us," she grinned, "we wouldn't get lost in the sea of people if there's only fifty of them."

"That sound reasonable." Meiko stood up and turned around to put away her empty plate, showing off her round butt covered in striped panties in the process.

"Don't you have any dignity whatsoever?" Luka rolled her eyes.

"Fuck dignity, it's comfy," she replied and sat back down with a mischievous smile.

"Whatever, just don't be surprised if little Len falls in love with your shapes. And then you'll have to tell him that your interest lies elsewhere."

Meiko laughed. "My interest currently lies in the back."

"Oh yeah, how did you manage to sneak Naomi in without anyone asking questions?"

"Please, we've been keeping this relationship in secret for so long, we know how to get around."

"Ha!" Rin's head suddenly popped up behind the corner, followed by the rest of her body. She was dressed in light blue pajamas and had her puppy slippers on -fluffy shoes in the shape of dog's feet, including little fake nails in the front. "I knew you're going out with someone on the crew bus!"

"Whoops," said Meiko. The twin sat next to her, pulled up her guitar which she still held on to and clenched its body in her arms; its neck rested softly on her left shoulder.

"Well, there goes your secret." Luka sipped on her coffee.

"Heeey, Rin," the busted woman purred in the girl's direction; "you're not gonna tell anyone, are you? Nobody knows, except for Luka here."

"Of course!" Rin replied. "I won't tell, I swear."

* * *

"Are you kidding?" Miku said literally two hours later in their hotel room.

"Nope! All this time I knew she was keeping something from us, but I just kinda assumed it was a __boy__." Rin was sitting on her bed with her back against the wall, looking around the room. This one had dark red-ish walls, sturdy looking beds with white sheets and a small TV at the opposing wall, clutched betweed two armchairs. There was a built-in wardrobe in the short corridor leading to the exit; the bathroom was at the other side.

"Please don't tell her that I told you," she added and turned her head towards Miku. She was digging in the depths of her suitcase. There was something ironic about watching the big, famous pop star rolling arms deep in the mess that was her luggage, wearing a plain flannel shirt and the baggiest sweatpants in the world. "I promised her I won't say anything, and I won't, at least from now on. But I had to share it with __you__ , you gotta admit."

Her friend chuckled. "Yeah, this is big news. Not that it's any of our business, though. But... you know."

"Yup. We have a queer friend and we didn't even know." Rin watched Miku quietly for a few seconds. "Whatcha lookin' for?"

"My hair dye," she said. "I'm almost out, but I know I have a little bit left. Somewhere."

"Still, you should tell them to get you a new supply."

"I will tonight." The girl finally found what she was looking for; she threw a small turqoise box on her bed and exhaled deeply. "Hey, you were talking about Luka's idea."

"Oooh, righty!" The twin remembered. "Luka came up with this idea that we could start meeting our fans. They were talking about it with Mom-ko in front of me."

Miku thought for a moment and then pulled a short black skirt and a thin grey sweater out of her suitcase. "Why so suddenly, though?"

"Remember your little identity crisis a while back?" Rin asked with an ironic smile. "And how I ran away yesterday? Luka thinks it wouldn't hurt if we felt more connected to our fans. And they to us, too."

"Meaning?" Slowly slipped out of her sweatpants; her shirt was long enough to cover any unnecessary details.

"Meaning that if seeing us talk to them might make them realise that we're only human. And it might make __us__ realise that people value our lives. At least that's the way she put it," the twin added.

Someone knocked on the door and entered.

"Miku?" Kaito called and emerged from the corridor. It only took him a fraction of a second to realise that Miku had no pants on; his face turned red like a Summer sun at dawn, and he embarrasedly looked at the wall. "Um, sorry. Should have waited outside."

"It's fine, we're all friends here," she said with laughter. "What do you need?"

"I, uh, came to return the, um, earphones. That I borrowed yesterday." The boy carefully looked her in the eyes instead of anywhere lower. He handed her a neatly knotted ball of wires.

"Ah, thanks." She took them and smiled. "We'll talk later, ok? We're in the middle of something here."

"Fine. Uh, see you guys later," Kaito stuttered and quickly turned around and left.

Rin burst out laughing as soon as the door closed behind him. "You and Meiko are horrible, both of you," she said. "You're walking around half naked, scaring our poor boys to death."

Miku was a little red herself. "I don't know what the big deal is. We work together, we change costumes all the time. Of course we're going to see each other every now and then."

"Yeah, but he's..." The twin began, but coughed and looked away without finishing the sentence.

"He's what?" Her friend proceeded to unbutton her shirt.

"Nothing, nevermind."

"Were you about to say that he has a crush on me?"

Rin looked at her. Miku's expression hasn't changed whatsoever as she asked that question; she was just curious.

" _ _Finally__ you noticed," she told her. "Or have you known it before?"

The shirt fell on the ground and Miku put on the skirt that she picked before without a word.

"I was suspicious," she admitted eventually and pulled the grey sweater over her head as well. "He spends quite a lot of time with me."

"Well, that, and also he's not capable of a coherent conversation when you're around."

"He's actually improving," Miku grinned, but her eyes were troubled. She sat down on her bed against Rin. "What do you think I should do about that?"

"I don't know, what do __you__ think?" The blond girl looked at the window next to her. It was hard to look outside from this angle, but she at least saw a tiny piece of the sky. The sun was shining, but small clouds were moving rapidly all over the blue canvas.

Her friend sighed. "I don't know either," she confessed. "Kaito is... a nice guy. He would love to see everyone happy, and he always comforts me when I'm down. But... Is that a good enough reason to have a relationship with him?"

"That's your decision, Miku. How do you feel about him?"

"How indeed?" Miku was looking at the ground. "I'm confused. I appreciate what he does, and sometimes I just want him to give me a big hug when I need to feel safe. But I think he'd like to own me -own my life so that he can constantly make me happy. And he just can't be responsible for my happiness all the time."

She looked at Rin who was frowning at her. "I need time for myself, too. Especially with all this mess that's been happening in my head."

The twin blinked. "What mess?"

"Oh, it's nothing. Forget I said it."

"Like heck I'll forget!" Rin pushed herself from the wall and sat on the bed's edge, closer to Miku. "Tell me!"

She smiled. "Rin, really, that's nothing that I want to bother you with."

"You're a moron." The twin suddenly jumped forward and began to rapidly poke on Miku's belly. Her distant expression immediately turned to a squeaking laughter, and she fought back.

"I'm your family, whether you like it or not," Rin said during the torture. "If there's something that bothers you, I wanna know!"

"Fine, just get off, you maniac," Miku replied with a wide smile that the twin acknowledged with a grin of satisfaction.

"It's just that..." she began. "Sometimes I just snap and lose control of my emotions. Sometimes I feel hyped and... alive, and then the smallest shittiest thing happens, and I begin to hate myself for the rest of the day. And that scares me, that's all."

"Please, Miku," her friend tapped her on the knee with her hand; "everyone feels sad sometimes, that's not something to worry about."

She wanted to tell her the truth: that her states of hopeless apathy weren't just "sad". That every time she was happy, she hoped that this time it will last forever, and yet anxiously feared that it will come back. That she felt trapped in a cycle with no way out and didn't even know what was wrong with her. It was as if two different Mikus lived inside her, and when the dark Miku took over, she couldn't do anything to stop her, and that was the scariest part of her problem.

But she couldn't tell Rin all this. Maybe Miku just doubted that she would be able to understand, maybe she wasn't ready to talk about it so openly. For the most part, she wanted to stick to not bothering her friend with a problem so personal.

"I guess you're right," she said instead. "Maybe I just need a vacation. We've been on tour for almost a year now without any breaks worth mentioning."

"Tell me about that," Rin agreed, seemingly dropping the subject. "I love this, but it's starting to feel a little claustrophobic."

"I wish I had the guts to just disappear like you did yesterday," Miku smiled.

"Meh, that wasn't my guts, that was Ichiro's fault."

"Right." Rin had told her all the details regarding her ex-almost-boyfriend after the show the day before. "How do you feel about that? Compared to yesterday, I mean."

The twin fell on her back and stared at the ceiling. "Better. I freaked out yesterday, but it settled down over night. And Bellatrix helped a lot."

Miku blinked. "Who's Bellatrix?"

"My spirit animal!" she replied and peeked over to the corner with her eyes glowing. Her friend followed her gaze; Rin's new guitar was lying in one of the armchairs.

"You know, it __does__ look like you two were made for each other."

"Right?" Rin couldn't resist, she stood up and grabbed Bellatrix, taking her place on the armchair with the guitar on her knees. "She's nothing like all those fake guitars that I use on stage. She is __mine__."

"Maybe one of these days you'll have your own acoustic show?" Miku suggested and giggled.

"No shit! Hey, check this out, maybe you'll know this one."

Rin started singing and playing a song from the latest demo compilation sent in by the management. It was another one of those songs about dysfunctional relationships; Miku vaguely remembered that its title was Patchwork Staccato. The acoustic guitar gave the song a bit of an ironic undertone, but it actually fit it really well at the same time.

The twin made it all the way to the chorus when she started to mix up the chords. She paused for a moment and finished the song early with a loud disonant chord.

"God dammit," she cursed, and her shoulders were shaking from laughter.

* * *

In the adjacent room, Luka grinned. She felt the urge to go in there and tell the girls that they should be more considerate of their neighbors, but decided that it wasn't so important. Besides, she was the one responsible for Rin's new friend, and because she was happy about the level of enthusiasm that the girl showed, she didn't want to discourage her.

Luka was preparing for the call she had to make. She wanted to tell the management about her idea, and she needed to summarise the terms that she had to discuss.

At that point, she had all of her colleagues' blessings to organise the fan meetings, except for Miku who she didn't get to talk to yet. Meiko and Rin really supported such idea, while Len was -as always -rather indifferent to it, stating that if the others choose to do it, he'll join. As for Kaito, he didn't say it explicitely but it sounded a lot like his willingness to do it depended solely on Miku's opinion which wasn't yet known.

Such standpoint was upsetting Luka on two different levels; the first being that Kaito was clearly forgetting about his own life in an attempt to give his all to his love interest. The longer Miku was rejecting him, the more desperate he seemed to grow, and the more sorry she felt for him.

There was another part of her, one that has been ever so slowly and quietly awakening as time passed by. After their little drunken incident that one evening, Luka never considered that it meant anything, and she and Kaito were great friends. But what Rin told her on the bus the other day made her think.

She realised that they really did get along really well. Luka felt that she always knew what was on Kaito's mind before he even opened his mouth, and that if he would look around for other people than Miku, he might see the same thing. Even if she was drunk, come to think of it, she wasn't sure if she'd let anyone else get that close to her. There seemed to be some kind of connection between her and Kaito, and who knew what could have happened hadn't he lost his mind for the turqoise girl soon after their big tour began.

Luka told nothing of this to anyone; instead, she focused all the more on making others happy, hoping to forget about her own troubles. Besides, she didn't think Kaito would snap out of his crush just because; he still needed time, and as long as he did, there was nothing left to do but sit and wait.


	6. Ch 6 - Rejections

**CHAPTER 6: Rejections**

It was kind of a letdown that the management disapproved of their idea to start meeting with the fans. They said that their image was built in direct contradiction with this, and that they don't want to break the mystery. Besides, all six of them knew well what they could expect, and they can't suddenly change their minds about little things like that. If they wanted their show to be successful, they had to make sacrifices.

That being said, the management did understand that the stars have been working hard, basically non-stop for the past year; and they promised to make a break soon. Shows and work meetings have been booked for the next four months, all the way to January, with no stops except a shork break over Christmas holidays, and little could be done about that. For the time being, at least the date of the upcoming meeting and a brief studio session have been postponed, saving everyone about ten days in total.

Other than that, the big guys also asked if the singers were in need of a touring therapist, regarding the low spirit that has been sneaking up on them. They dismissed that suggestion.

"Therapists are for pussies," said Rin; "or people with _real_ issues." Miku looked at her and frowned, but said nothing.

Soon, the date of their break was right around the corner. It was Wednesday, the evening of their last show for the next two weeks. They were hanging out in the living room backstage, all in their concert outfits. Miku was looking in a big mirror on the wall playing with her tie -for the love of her, she suddenly couldn't remember how to tie it properly. Kaito watched her from the dark green couch in the middle of the room; Rin was sitting next to him, playing with Bellatrix and humming something quietly. Meiko and Luka were standing in the back trying to stuff a whole bag worth of marshmallows in their mouths. It was good that noone else was paying attention to them, it was gross.

The last of them left, Len, then walked inside with a phone in his hand.

"Hey, sis," he called out to Rin who looked up at him. "Just talked to mom. They'll come pick us up on Friday morning."

"Sweet!" his sister smiled widely. "I can't wait to see everyone again."

"Eweven," said Luka with difficulty. Len came to sit down next to Kaito and began playing something on his phone.

"Are you sure you don't wanna come with us, Miku?" Rin asked. "You'd like our family. You already like _us_ , right?"

Miku snickered, but with much less entertainment than she would without the stupid turqoise tie on her neck that still didn't want to cooperate. "Nah, thanks. Maybe next time."

"Twelf," Meiko stuffed another marshmallow in her mouth. "Cud hew shome shlack, Win. She'sh sheein' hew own fawily, wighd?"

Luka tried to chuckle, but gagged and had no choice but to spit out all the undisclosed material into a trash can that the girls had set between them. The others laughed with her, some of them more hesitantly, some of them less.

"That's not fair, making me laugh!" the girl complained. "Anyone got a tissue?"

"Here." Kaito stood up while reaching into his pocket and took two quick steps towards Luka with a tiny packet in his hand. He couldn't have helped but snicker when he watched her wipe her own salliva off of her chin. "Gosh, if only you could see yourself right now. This is the grossest I've ever seen you."

"Oh yeah?" She replied and snatched the half-full bag of marshmallows. "Let's see how gross _you_ look when I stuff all this inside you!"

Meiko who had in the mean time spat out the content of her mouth left the two to sort out their dispute on their own and walked towards Miku. "Lemme help you," she said, grabbed her by the shoulders and turned her. "I can't watch this any longer."

"Thanks," she replied, and sighed when the woman proceeded to swiftly knot her tie in the right way. "I don't know what's on my mind today, I just couldn't do it."

"Hey, that happens to all of us." Meiko pulled down one last time and the tie was suddenly lying perfectly on the singer's chest.

"Maybe, but... Me and Len are the only ones wearing ties around here. That's unfair." She grinned. "What are you doing on your vacation?"

"Oh. Haven't decided yet. But I'll have to come back to the studio in five days anyway, since I'm actually _working_ unlike the rest of you," Meiko added in a louder voice and looked around the room cheekily.

"Hey, we're all bustin' our asses over here!" said Rin who was kneeling on the sofa, leaning on the cushions and watching Luka and Kaito fight.

"Indeed. Anyway," the woman continued and turned her head back towards Miku, "I'm gonna be working on some new costumes and choreographies starting next week."

"Sounds cool. Maybe I'll see you then, I'll probably end up in the studio too."

"Whaaaaat!" Meiko exclaimed. The twins flinched and looked at her irritatedly. "You have two weeks off and you plan to spend them by working? What about your family?"

"Mei, _you guys_ are my family," Miku smiled and her eyes briefly shifted towards Rin. The twin girl blinked, casually stood up and left the room. "And since you'll be all gone, I don't think there's gonna be much left for me to do."

"Hold on!" Kaito was suddenly standing right next to them, leaving Luka behind with her bag of marshmallows, most of which were scattered across the floor by that point. "Are you seriously going to spend the entire vacation in the studio on your own?"

"It's not a big deal, really. I'll just wait until you all get back, and we'll hop on this crazy train again."

"I guess, but..." The boy seemed troubled. Meiko chose to leave them alone and proceeded to help Luka clean up the white fluffy mess. "Don't you miss your friends? And parents? They're..."

"HEY!" Rin shouted from the corridor. "Miku! You're being called on stage!"

"Right!" she replied and headed towards the door, but took one more glance at Kaito and smiled encouragingly. "Seriously, dude. You don't have to worry. Everything will be fine."

He sighed. "As you wish. Good luck out there."

"See ya later!" Meiko shouted from the floor. Miku waved them and disappeared around the corner.

Rin was waiting for her at the end of the corridor. Noone else was around.

"Thank you," the turqoise girl told her. "And sorry. You know I hate it when they start asking about family."

"It's alright." The twin gave her a hug. "But you know you're gonna have to tell them someday, don't you?"

"Probably. But I'd like to postpone that as long as I can."

"And hey," Rin crossed her arms; "you might not like it when we worry about you, but you'll _have_ to take it from me. I just don't want you left behind when we all go have fun without you. That's not fair."

"Please, drop it already." Miku frowned. "I can handle it. I won't be all alone, there will be plenty of people in the studio."

"We'll see. I'll call you every day, can you handle that at least?"

She chuckled. "I'm so glad I have you."

"No probs. Now, you should probably get out there before Sammy _actually_ calls you in," Rin grinned.

"Okay. Bye for now!"

"See you!"

* * *

Kaito almost didn't register when Rin came back to the living room. He had previously retreated quietly to the back of the room, sat down on the ground in the corner and spaced out.

There was clearly something that Miku was keeping from him -from all of them, in fact. He hadn't decided yet which was worse: that he wanted to help her and had no idea where to begin, since he didn't know what the problem was; or that she was keeping secrets from him, no matter how much he wished for her to be completely honest with him.

Kaito had been increasingly upset at the world for the last couple of weeks. Things weren't going the way he expected with Miku. Kaito didn't know if he was that bad at showing her all the affection she needed -as he thought -or she just didn't appreciate it. The result was the same regardless: he wasn't feeling the same kind of attachment from Miku that he felt towards her.

And because Kaito didn't know who he'd be without her, he was still refusing to accept this, hoping that some day, some hour, some second, she might realise what she had in him.

Sometimes, very rarely, he was beginning to have second thoughts. _Maybe,_ those thoughts were telling him, _it was time to move on. She will never love you. Not the same way you love her._

 _-But what if she will?_ Kaito replied. _If I just keep trying, she could. I wouldn't want to miss my chance._

 _-If you say so._ His brain cackled. _You brought this on yourself. You're too cowardly to just_ _tell her_ _how you feel. All this uncertainty stems from that._

 _-But,_ he asked with desperation, _what if Miku's just like me? What if she has feelings for me, but is afraid to say so?_

 _-Heh. At this rate, we'll probably never know._

And so his struggle continued. He could never bring himself to come clean, the fear of being rejected was too strong -and growing stronger with every day this problem remained unresolved.

The most confusing part was that no matter how difficult it was for Kaito, everything felt strangely happy at the same time. His love for Miku stood above all else and gave him strength to keep going.

Someone entered his peripheral vision. He lifted his head: Luka was looking at him. In the next moment, Kaito realised that she said something.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing. I just wanted to know what you were thinking about," Luka smiled. "It's like you're not even here."

Kaito thought of an excuse. "Maybe I'm just glad that we're going on vacation," he said. "The work's been getting on me lately."

"The work." She sat down next to him. "Well, I'm sure it will help you if you're not going to see _the work_ for a few days."

There was just a hint of irony and smartassery in her voice that he was more used to hearing from Rin.

"Please, Luka," he asked her quietly so that the rest wouldn't hear. "You're so much smarter than me, what do you think I should do?"

"Honestly?"

"Yes."

His friend thought about it. "Honestly, I think you should just pull your head out of your ass. There are other important things in life besides Miku."

"You think I don't know this?" Kaito's gaze turned back at the ground. "I'm trying. I'm trying to get her out of my head, but... It seems impossible."

"Well, since you're literally spending all your time with her, yeah, it's impossible."

"I'm...!" He almost retorted, but realised she was right. "I mean... yeah."

Somewhere far away, the beat to 39 Music began to play. Miku arrived on the stage and started off the show.

"You gotta realise what you really want. And you can't do that when you're always all around Miku." Luka smiled with encouragement. "Like I said, it's good that you'll spend some time apart."

This thought managed to lighten up his mood a little bit. Not for any particular reason or expectation, just for the promise that the change of environment held. Kaito hadn't realised it before, but he was really looking forward to having several days off.

There was only one problem.

"Um..." he opened his mouth. "I actually forgot to make any plans. I'm staying with my parents and little sister, that's decided. But that's also the only thing so far."

Luka giggled. "Don't you have any old friends back in... Where do your parents live?"

"Right in the middle of Tokyo. Lame, I know."

"Hey, so does my mom!" she grinned. "If you really won't have anything better to do, we could definitely hang out."

"Don't _you_ have any old friends there?"

"Just a few, and they'll be busy most of the time. I think I would have ended up at home reading Stephen King for the entire time I'm there."

"Not to mention the fact that you can't walk around Tokyo without being recognised, huh?"

Luka shrugged. "I don't mind being recognised. It's when people think we're gods what pisses me off. And now the management shut down our idea to break the fourth wall."

" _Your_ idea," he corrected her with a smile. "Are you still upset about it?"

"Meh, forget it. They probably know what they're doing."

Kaito looked around the room. Meiko was gone, probably watching the show behind the stage or hanging out with the crew. Len was on his phone, as usual. Rin was looking at the two of them, peeking from behind the sofa; as soon as her eyes met with his, she chuckled and disappeared.

"I think Rin thinks we're up to something," he whispered to Luka amusedly.

She was silent for two seconds. "Yeah. So young and naïve," she mumbled eventually and kind of distantly.

"I think you're right, though," said Kaito and decided to ignore her strange comment. "We can meet up later. If we're both bored."

"I'd love to," Luka replied. "No work, no fame, no M... music. Just the two of us."

He suddenly remembered something and laughed. "We'll just have to be more careful this time."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you remember what happened the last time the two of us were hanging out, right?"

Luka blinked. "Gosh, you remember that?"

Of course he did. It was the night when they had a couple more drinks than necessary. He had no real idea what he was doing: he was drunk, and Luka was, well, an attractive woman. Things just escalated faster than they realised back then. Of course today, he could only laugh at that memory.

"It's funny," he said with a dumb smile, "that we could simply just make out without any feelings, and now I can't even bring myself to hold hands with Miku."

"Funny things do happen," she said with a blank expression.


	7. Ch 7 - The Break

_Sidenote: You can thank a certain "Lyn" for this chapter. I didn't have any plans to give Meiko a significant role in the story but their review on the previous chapter made me reconsider. :D_

* * *

 **CHAPTER 7: The Break**

Soon, everyone said their goodbyes, and the Vocaloids scattered across Japan. Len, Rin and Miku stayed in the city for one more day under the supervision of Sammy who volunteered to keep an eye out for the kids (to the displeasure of Rin who didn't exactly feel the need to be supervised). In the next morning, the Kagamine parents arrived, stuffed the twins in their car after an appropriate amount of time of laughing and hugging, and left.

Kaito and Luka, on the other hand, had already sat on a train to Tokyo on the previous day, along with a few other crew members heading in that direction. The blue boy seemed kind of absent-minded, but Luka was beaming and appeared pretty excited to leave the Vocaloid madness behind for some time.

As for Meiko, she and her girlfriend spent the first five days of the general holiday mostly at Naomi's place, finally enjoying each other's company without the need of hiding their relationship from anyone -and they actually grew confident about stopping hiding it whatsoever during that time. They were both returning to work on the following Tuesday -the crew had to start working on a few new performance arrangements, such as new choreographies, costumes, and all the small details that had to be perfected before the new songs would be presented to common people. The management wanted them to have these chores finished by the end of the year so that the performers could then start practising immediately.

When Meiko, Naomi and a small group of their friends from the crew arrived in the studio -a small compound complete with bedrooms, bathrooms and a kitchen so that they wouldn't have to leave at all for the entire time they were working -Miku was already there. Apparently she asked the guys in the management to book her room in a hotel nearby for the few days before the studio and conjoined quarters were available. This ultimately meant that she had spent the last five days on her own, which would perhaps explain her enthusiasm when she met with Meiko and others.

While she too was happy to see her, the woman thought it was strange for Miku to be left alone for all that time, something that probably didn't occur to the management. That and the way she avoided any kind of discussion related to her family made Meiko think there was something dark hiding behind Miku's smile. But she didn't want to worry too much, knowing that she might just be pessimistic. Perhaps all those things had a simple explanation.

Besides, Miku made her worry in a completely different way right on the first evening in the studio. The crew that assembled there consisted of seven people: three women, including herself, and four guys -and Miku as the eighth person among them. While they were all relatively young, there was still at least a six year difference between every one of them and the turqoise singer. That meant that the star was suddenly hanging out with a bunch of happy-go-lucky young adults with a partying attitude.

In the evening, they all gathered in the conference room, more for the convenience of it than anything else -it was close to their quarters as well as the courtyard which was suitable for the smokers among them. While Miku usually prefered to keep a low profile, she was there with them right from the moment the first bottle has been opened. She, quite uncharacteristically for her, immediately drank, talked and laughed with everyone else like there was no tomorrow. And yet again, this sudden change left Meiko perplexed: she didn't know if the girl was just that joyous to be around people again, or whether she was desperately trying to... well, _feel_ happy. Or, in other words, forget about something else that might have been on her mind.

In any case, the woman didn't like the pace at which the evening was flying by, and was seriously considering sending Miku back to her quarters before something would go wrong. Being respectful of her colleague thus far, though, she decided to just wait for the time being and maybe try to keep her own head clear in case her help was needed.

"Lemme tell you," the girl said to her several shots later, swaying softly on place; "you have no idea how much I've missed being around people!"

"Yeah," Meiko replied. "But I still don't know why you stayed behind all on your own."

"Neither do I!" Miku chuckled. "Seriously, I don't know what I was thinking."

"Well, whatever your reason was, I'm glad you're able to forget about it tonight. Just..."

The girl blinked. "Just what?"

"Just don't overdo it, okay? You're not used to drinking, and you're... well, you're really skinny."

"Should I take that as a compliment?" Miku smiled amusedly. "You shouldn't flirt with me, your girlfriend is sitting right next to you."

Meiko frowned. "Who told you?"

"Rin! But, like, don't tell her that I told you that you- that she- fuck," she laughed, staggered, and continued slowly. "Don't tell her... that I told _you_... that she told... mmmme."

"Miku, how about you take a walk outside for a while?" she suggested. "We've been here for less than thirty minutes, and you've had way too many shots. You know I'm right about this."

"...yeah. I mean," she raised her voice, "I don't f-f- _feel_ drunk. I'm just spinning. I still know what I'm doing."

"Precisely. That's a good time to stop. At least for now, while you still listen to me." This time, they both laughed.

"You probably have more experience with drinking than me, don't you?" Miku asked.

"Don't be surprised, I have a few years' advantage."

"Hm. Fine, I'm gonna trust you," the girl said and walked not really straight to the door. "Don't drink everything while I'm gone!"

"Hey, Mei," Reaper spoke up. Reaper was a pale sound engineer who acquired his nickname for his preference in black clothing and grim conversation topics; he was sitting on a chair next to an open window casually smoking an e-cigarette. "Looks like Miku's gonna get in trouble if she continues like this."

"I'd rather not let her," Meiko replied. Naomi made advantage of the singer's departure and laid her head on the woman's shoulder. "But we've all been there, haven't we? Remember Luka's birthday?"

"I hardly do," Reaper said with just a hint of a smile. "I'm just saying, it's kinda weird to see... my boss, basically, wasted."

"Well, 'boss' might be kind of a stretch. I'd say she's on the same level as the rest of us, but with a bigger salary."

Naomi giggled. "By the way, aren't you at least a little envious sometimes? You get the least attention of them all."

"Nah, I don't need attention."

"Says the one who shows the most boobs on stage," Reaper mumbled jokingly.

"I _have_ the most boobs on stage!" Meiko retorted with an impish smile. "Do you have any idea how many guys do they drag to the show?"

"Too bad none of them are gonna get some," said Naomi and hugged her. "You're all mine!"

This thing went on for a while, and Meiko felt at home. She was honest; she didn't crave attention. This, however, _this_ was the most amazing part of it all: getting to hang out with a group of the most amazing friends all the time. All of them were, in one way or another, contributing to the madness that got them all together in the first place, and that was an amazing experience to share.

Naomi and Reaper were merely two of the whole bunch of awesome people Meiko likely wouldn't have met if the Vocaloids didn't exist -or if _she_ was the star of the show, spending most of her time with the other singers rather than around the guys backstage. It wasn't a bad thing, and everyone was nice to each other; but there still was some kind of invisible barrier dividing the performers and "the others", and it was understandable. Both of these groups lived in their own separate worlds. Frankly, the only reason she was seen on the stage occasionally was that she was a good singer and already had some kind of minor popularity before the Vocaloids were even a thing.

It wasn't until two more rounds of shots have been passed around that she realised Miku has been gone for quite some time.

"Honey," she said to Naomi; "I should go look for Miku. Wanna come with me?"

"Sure."

They stood up, walked out the door and through the short corridor leading to the courtyard. There, they looked into the dark and cold night. The courtyard was surrounded by walls from three sides; to the right was a high wire fence behind which was a small parking lot, currently containing two cars, followed by yet another wire fence. Miku was nowhere to be seen.

"Do you think she came back to her room?" Naomi asked and lit a cigarette.

Meiko followed her example. "Probably. The exit should be locked for the night, and the studio as well."

"That wouldn't really stop Rin if she was here."

"Nope, and thank God she isn't."

They chuckled.

"Seriously though," said Naomi; "I think you worry too much about her."

"Who, Rin?" Meiko blew out a small cloud of smoke.

"Miku, you silly. She's having a good time, isn't she?"

"I guess. But, I don't know... Something doesn't feel right to me."

"See? You're always doing this." Her girlfriend frowned. "Sometimes things are just things. Everything doesn't have to be complicated."

Meiko sighed. "I really wish to believe that."

"You know, when I met you, I thought you were just a crazy gal who doesn't worry about anything. What changed?"

"What changed was, we've seen each other naked since then."

Naomi giggled. "Come on, seriously!"

"I am serious!" Meiko gave her a kiss. "I don't share my problems with people who aren't close to me. When I dare to worry around you, it's because I'm comfortable with you."

"So basically all it takes for you to get close to someone is to sleep with them?" her girlfriend smirked.

"Apparently so," she laughed.

Naomi hugged her and pressed her lips against hers; she inhaled from her cigarette beforehand, so she now sent all the smoke directly to Meiko's mouth.

"You sneaky bitch," she said in reaction.

"You know," the girl purred into her ear provocatively; "I think we may have grown... kinda distant lately."

"Mmm. Wanna do something about that?" Meiko understood her suggestion. "Can it wait until we're done smoking?"

Then, she heard it. It was almost more of a feeling than an actual sound, just in the corner of her ear. Someone was sobbing nearby.

"Shh. You hear that?" she asked Naomi quietly.

"What?"

The women listened. For two seconds, there was nothing -and then, a sniff.

"Sounds like it's coming from the parking lot." All of her thoughts about Miku came back, and Meiko almost felt guilty for forgetting about her for a little while. "You think that's Miku?"

"I dunno," said Naomi. "You should check it out. If it's Miku, she's probably more likely to talk to you alone."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah! Bros before hoes, right?" she smiled, stubbed out her cigarette and gave her a peck on the cheek. "I'll wait inside."

"Love you!" Meiko smiled, but her expression came back to a worried one as soon as her girlfriend disappeared in the building. She stomped on her own cigarette and walked to the parking lot.

She didn't have to look too hard. Miku was in the back, sitting on the ground and hugging her knees with her back against the front door of Reaper's Toyota. She didn't even lift her head when Meiko showed up.

"Hey," the woman said.

"Go away," Miku mumbled without the slightest movement. "Please."

"No way." Meiko stepped closer. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing, go away!" the girl repeated a bit louder. She ignored her and sat down next to her.

"Please-"

"Why do you care?" Miku retorted and sniffed again. "Noone ever cares..."

Meiko brought her arm around her shoulders and forced her to lean on her. Miku began to cry.

"I'm -I'm sorry," she told her between her sobs. "I'm s-such a mess..."

"No, you're not," Meiko comforted her. "Sweetie, why would you think noone cares about you?"

"I-I don't know. I'm just... s-scared."

"Of what?"

"That I-I'll be an... inconvenience... to all of you... a-and you will... hate me..." Miku's voice slowly dissolved into incoherent, tearful gibberish.

"Honey," Meiko said after a while of processing her friend's confession; "you're a cow, you know that?"

Against all odds, she managed to make the girl chuckle.

"I don't know what makes you think like this," she continued; "and if you don't wanna tell me, that's fine. But you should know that all of us love the absolute shit outta you."

Miku wiped her eyes with her sleeves. "I know I _should_ know that, Mei. I just... sometimes can't believe it."

"Do you think I'd sit here with you right now if I didn't care about you?" Meiko asked. Her friend didn't have an answer to that. "See? And I guarantee you, if anyone else was here instead of me -Rin, Len, Kaito, Luka -they'd all do the same. We don't want you to be sad."

"I'm not sad," Miku whined. "I'm just... afraid. All the time, I expect to do something terrible... and..." Her lips shook. "I don't want to h-hurt anyone."

"I think you're just looking for excuses to hate yourself," Meiko said what was on her mind. "And I think that's bullshit. You're a kind, loving and lovable person who would never even _think_ about hurting anyone."

"B-but what if-"

"No, no 'what ifs'. Look at me."

She pulled back a little, and the two girls looked into each other's eyes.

"Now listen: we love you, and we will always love you. And should you ever have any doubts about it, just come find me and I'll punch you in the face. And then I'll hug you, 'cause I love you. Do you understand?"

Miku smiled and burried her face in her shoulder again.

"Thank you," she said quietly when Meiko wrapped her arms around her. "I'll just... I'll trust you."

"Works for me," the woman sighed. "Wanna go back inside now? It's kinda cold."

"Yeah, sure."

They stood up and set off towards the house.

"By the way," Meiko said while they were walking; "you still haven't told me why you were here in the city all by yourself. Didn't you want to see your family?"

Miku looked away. "No, I didn't."

The way she said it convinced Meiko that it probably wasn't a good conversation topic for the time being. It wasn't unlikely that something inside Miku's family was the exact reason of her state of mind.

If Meiko was worried about her ten minutes ago, she was almost freaking out inside after that. There was definitely something wrong. Miku wasn't like this most of the time, or if she was, she kept it from everyone else. Perhaps she was the same as herself -she didn't want to bother all the people around her with her struggles. The problem with _her_ was that she didn't believe anyone at all would care to hear it.

Meiko breathed out again. She made a mental note to ask Rin if she knew more about her problems on the next day. If anyone knew anything, it would be Miku's best friend.


	8. Ch 8 - Change Of Heart

**CHAPTER 8: Change Of Heart**

The first half of their break was amazing. Kaito ended up hanging out with Luka on almost every day, and he was genuinely surprised by the amount of fun he was having. Once he peeked out of his shell, he was able to look back and see that maybe his friend was right: he _had_ been spending most of his time locked inside his own head thinking about Miku and the crap related to the whole situation. Luka basically forced him to forget about it all and freakin' enjoy himself more.

Even though the first day hadn't been ideal. The two of them agreed on taking the risk of going to a teahouse together -the risk here being the possibility of being recognised in public and getting overwhelmed by fangirling masses. While there weren't exactly _crowds_ of people stepping up and asking for selfies, signatures, hugs and whatnot, Kaito and Luka were stopped by strangers on the street three times before even getting to the teahouse itself. The private atmosphere of the establishment had then been kind of ruined by another group of people randomly visiting and spotting them immediately.

Sure, it was flattering, and the feeling of being even recognised, let alone praised, was the strangest thing on the planet. But at the same time, that was the moment it hit Kaito: they probably wouldn't be able to be anonymous ever again. All the cheap, quiet places they'd like to visit when they were younger -and less famous -were going to be ruined by someone screaming at the top of their lungs. Some of their fans indeed could be annoying; for example, some of them were apparently shipping him with Luka and were sort of disappointed when they learned that the two of them weren't in fact on a date (although Luka seemed to support that idea in front of them, but Kaito figured she probably just liked to mess with their heads).

The next day, she came to his place and they tried to watch Death Note together. It resulted in Luka falling asleep on his shoulder; apparently, the previous day had been pretty exhausting for her. Soon, he passed out as well -and that's how his little sister Yuki found them when she came home from school. She wouldn't let him hear the end of it for the entire evening.

At first, a small part of him was upset that he couldn't have done things like that with Miku. But as the days were passing by and Kaito and Luka had been coming up with awesome ideas for spending time together, he was beginning to feel differently -towards both of the girls. He saw more and more clearly that him and the turqoise star might not have been exactly a perfect match. Yet, he had been the happiest in a really long time, and he had Luka to thank for it. Everything they did together, whether they were just talking or, for example, baking cookies at her place (most of which turned out a lot blacker than they intended), felt incredibly natural -as opposed to choosing each word carefully to leave the best impression, like he had done with Miku. With Luka, he was more confident in just being himself, perhaps because he wasn't trying to prove anything to her.

Still, Kaito subconsciously knew that this was merely a timeout. The whole thing with Miku waited inside his head to be properly sorted out, and he was still afraid to confront it, knowing there would probably be a lot of pain to absorb. He wasn't ready for it yet, so he avoided talking or even thinking about Miku as much as he could until the time was right.

And then came the evening when everything changed.

 _"By the way,"_ Rin wrote him in chat in the middle of a conversation; _"have you heard from Miku lately?"_

"No, I haven't really heard from anyone since I left," he replied.

 _"Except Luka, of course. ;)"_

"Yup. Why are you asking about Miku?"

 _"Meiko called this morning, she was asking me if I knew anything about what's bothering her."_

"Why?"

 _"She wouldn't tell me, but I guess Miku's not doing well. Which makes sense, she's been kinda down for a while now. :("_

Kaito frowned at his computer. "I noticed, but she never told me anything specific."

 _"I don't know that much either, except..."_

Rin stopped typing for a minute.

 _"Sorry, I'm not supposed to talk about it."_

She probably meant well; it was actually nice of her to try and keep a secret for once. But to Kaito's brain, her words might have as well been a big red button that says Detonate. Later that night, when he was rolling in bed, he was _almost_ unwillingly going through crazy scenarios which might have been the cause of Miku's condition. Briefly going back to the talks he's had with her in the last few weeks, he couldn't remember if she was hinting towards anything at any point; and the more he thought about it, the more confused and worried he was.

A strange reflex kicked in, one that usually urged him to drop whatever he was doing and focus on Miku's well-being. Obviously, the feelings he had for Miku didn't have all the time necessary to go away, and it all came back to him, throwing away all that he might have learned over the last couple of days. It was that sort of irrational voice that he knew he shouldn't take a hundred percent seriously, but he couldn't stop listening to it anyway. It was always trying to convince him that maybe _this time,_ when Kaito shows her what she has in him, he might finally win her heart.

Kaito considered picking up the phone and calling her, but eventually decided against it. What would he even say to her? That he knew she was sad and wanted to help her? Even if that would seem as a good idea -which it didn't -he didn't want to do this over a phone. Saying that he cared about someone was one thing, but unless he actually did something to prove it, it was just an empty statement. And he didn't want to look like a bigmouth.

But he had to do something, that he knew for sure. Before she went to bed, Rin told him everything that Meiko told her -what Miku said and what she was crying about. When Kaito put the pieces together, he realised that the girl was probably feeling really lonely. She thought she couldn't trust anyone with her feelings and she refused to believe that someone was caring about her. Perhaps all she needed was for someone to be there with her -other than the people that were already in the studio who had to focus on their work.

Before he finally fell asleep, he knew two things for certain. One: that he cared about her and naturally wanted to cheer her up in any way he could; he'd have done this for any of his friends in this situation, but for Miku, he was still willing to go that one step further. And two: he knew exactly what he was supposed to do next.

Breaking the news to his family wasn't as hard as talking to Luka. Two days back, they booked each other for a short trip to Yokohama, a harbor city conveniently placed right next to Tokyo. At this moment, they were in a small park stuck between the harbors, with the ocean right next to it. There were only a few people there, and everyone seemed to be minding their own business -which was good, because the last thing Kaito wanted was being interrupted by some fans as he was trying to explain the whole situation to her.

"I already talked to Mei in the morning," he told her as they slowly walked forward. "I'll be there tonight, it's all set."

"So you're leaving, just like that?" she asked him with eyes wide open.

"I'm sorry," Kaito sighed. "I feel like... I have to."

"But why? I think Miku's in good hands as she is." Luka was looking at the ocean, facing away from him. "She's got Meiko there, to say the least."

"I know... But you know me, I can't just sit around knowing someone might need my help."

"And what kind of help are we talking about, Kaito?" The girl looked at him with a sarcastic smile. "Roses, chocolates and love confessions? Are you sure you don't want to use this situation to win her heart?"

"This has nothing to do with me," he retorted. "I refuse to let her suffer, that's all I'm saying."

"Yes, because you have to be the hero to her."

"Hey, if that was you, or Rin or Len, I wouldn't hesitate either. Don't you feel sorry for her, too?"

Luka's gaze turned towards the blue horizon again. "If I'm being honest? First of all, Miku seems to be inventing a lot of her troubles, she tends to overreact when something bad happends. And second, I've been busting my ass trying to help her before, but I don't think any of us can resolve her problems for her."

"That doesn't mean we can't be there for her when she needs us."

"But _does_ she really need us? I'm not so sure."

Kaito was running out of patience; he didn't like her tone. "I don't understand why we're even having this conversation. You don't need to be upset about anything."

"It seems you don't understand a lot of things," she simply replied, still refusing to look directly at him. He wanted to ask what she meant by that, but suddenly couldn't open his mouth. They walked a few steps in awkward silence.

"I'm sorry," Luka finally said. "It's just... I thought we established that you wanted to get her out of your head. I've been spending basically all my free time with you to help you forget, and in the end, you still choose her over me just because she's going through another one of her little crises?"

"That's really unfair of you, you know? I don't put my _hypothetical_ feelings in first place." Kaito softly, but firmly placed his hand on her shoulder, forcing her to stop and turn her eyes towards him. "I honestly care that she's not feeling good simply becuase she doesn't deserve that. Nobody does, and like I said, I'd travel all that distance all the same for _you_ if I knew I could help you out."

Luka was looking at him for two seconds and then slowly wrapped her arms around his neck.

"I'm sorry, I'm an asshole," she said when he hugged her back.

"No, you're not."

"I just don't want you to leave like this," she confessed, pulled back and looked into his eyes. "I guess I was... counting on us staying together for the rest of the vacation. You caught me off guard."

"Why don't you come with me then?" Kaito thought suddenly. "Two friends are better than one."

"Can't. I have that theater with mom tomorrow."

"Oh, right. I forgot." The two of them started walking again, but in a lighter atmosphere than before. "But you can come see us then, right? I mean, we'll only have two or three days of vacation left by then anyway."

"I guess I could," Luka smiled faintly. "You know, you still haven't told me what your plan with Miku is. You arrive in the studio, and then what?"

"I don't know. But think about it: she's basically trapped in there all by herself, except for a bunch of adults who have to work all day. She never told me why she didn't go to visit her family, but I'm guessing there's something bad going on, and Miku is feeling lonely because of it. I'd say she'll apreciate some company, don't you think?"

"Yeah. And then there's that thing with Meiko asking what the hell is wrong with her."

"By the way, I know Miku can be a little dramatic sometimes," Kaito said. "But that's all the more of a reason to show her that we stand by her."

"Hmph," Luka replied.

He had plenty of time to think about her attitude on the train in the evening. She didn't make it in any way easier for him to leave her behind, but he still thought Miku needed him more. What puzzled him was if Luka really meant what she said -that Miku was full of crap, or rather that she was expecting others to pull her out of the mud rather than trying to work her way up herself. And if this really was the case, maybe Luka was doing the good thing when she ignored her problems; but Kaito didn't have the stomach to do the same. That was why he was on that train, anyway.

Finally, with a sports bag worth of spare clothes in his hand and with a slightly enhanced heartbeat, he walked through the entrance to the studio area, crossed the yard and entered the door from which jovial voiced could be heard.

Reaper noticed him first. He was standing in the hallway talking to a guy that Kaito hasn't seen before; it was probably a studio employee.

"Oh, hey, dude!" said the sound engineer and briefly shook his hand. Kaito liked him; unlike some other crew members, Reaper has always been rather laid back and spoke with him on an equal level. The fact that he called him "dude" instead of "sir" was among the small things the singer appreciated.

"What's up, man?" he replied with a grin. His voice lured Meiko in from an adjacent room and into his arms. Soon, he found himself standing in the conference room among a bunch of his co-workers and a lot of alcohol. Miku wasn't there, though.

"Oh, before I forget," Meiko said and handed him a key. "You're staying in room 6. First floor, on the left, at the very back. It's right next to Miku."

"Thanks," he said and took the key. "I'll just drop my things there and I'll come back down. And I should probably tell Miku I'm here, too. Is she in her room?"

"Yup. I haven't told her you're coming, by the way," she told him with a wink.

"Gee, thanks a lot. She doesn't like surprises," Kaito smirked. "I'll be right back."

He walked up the stairs, found room number 6, unlocked it, walked in and threw his bag on one of the three beds inside, following it with his jacket. Then, he left the room again and slowly went over to door number 5, giving it a soft knock.

"Come in," Miku responded. Kaito's heart jumped a bit, and he entered.

The room was almost identical to his, with light walls, three beds and a single sports bag lying on one of them, even though this one was open and stuff was pouring out of it onto the bed sheet. On another of the beds, wearing only a pair of gray sweat pants and a tight black tanktop, Miku was lying on her back, just turning her gaze towards him from the ceiling. There was just one lamp lit on the night stand behind her, making it a little more difficult to see her face.

"Hi," he simply told her.

"Kaito?" she said with confusion and sat up. "What are you- when did you get here?"

"Just a few minutes ago. I just wanted to say 'hi' before I-"

Kaito didn't get to the end of that sentence, because Miku stood up, took two quick steps towards him and flung her arms around his neck. He immediately clenched her back and closed his eyes.

"I missed you so much," Miku confessed quietly.

"I missed you too."

They stood there like that for a long while, and yet to Kaito, it's been just a second.

"Will you stay here with me?" she finally asked when she stepped back and gave him a light smile. "Just a little longer?"

"Of course! But don't you wanna go downstairs with the others?"

Miku sat down back on her bed, and he sat next to her.

"I don't know. I did that two days ago and it didn't end well."

"How come?"

"Let's not talk about that. What have you been up to?"

Kaito then told her a brief summary of how he was spending his time on the Vocaloid break so far, and Miku in return told him how life's been for her during that time. It turned out she didn't have much to talk about; she was mostly on her own, either walking around the city, practising, or plainly trying to kill some time.

"I'm glad you're here," she concluded. "I thought I could do this by myself, but... I couldn't."

"You shouldn't have thought that in the first place, you know."

"It..." she sighed. "It sucks. I want to try to be the good person and just leave you all alone... I feel so selfish that I need other people around me."

"You're silly," he said and placed his arm around her waist; she leaned on him. "I'm here for you all the way and I'm doing that because I _want_ to. You don't have to feel guilty about anything."

"I don't know if I even deserve someone like you," Miku replied and looked at him.

Kaito wanted to say something in response, but made the mistake of looking into her eyes.

Before he knew it, they kissed; and once they started, they couldn't stop. Something else took control of his actions, something he hadn't felt before, something that at the same time scared him and filled him with anticipation. He ferociously attacked Miku's lips, and soon, they were all over each other.

"Wait..." she breathed out. "Can you switch off the light, please?"

Kaito looked up, reached out to the lamp and pressed the switch. The room succumbed into darkness, and he could only hear his heart beating rapidly -that, and a tank top being taken off.


	9. Ch 9 - Consequences

_Sidenote: Annimo, you should get an account on this website, man. I wanted to reply to your reviews so many times but I couldn't. :D Seriously though, thank you for sticking by since the beginning!_

* * *

 **CHAPTER 9: Consequences**

By the time the Vocaloids were on the road again, everyone felt refreshed and looked forward to the performances again -there were about 13 weeks worth of shows left in the current year, plus another two that were booked after Christmas. A longer break from touring, possibly lasting for several months, has been planned after that. Aside from well deserved couch-potatoing after months of hard work, the management and those crew members that had any say in the matter (led by Meiko) had gone through the final barrage of new songs and narrowed them down to eight that would be recorded and released throughout the first half of the next year. The place of the ninth song has been reserved for a song contest that was to be announced sometime in Spring; the collection was then supposed to close with a remix of three older songs, rounding the number of new releases to ten.

Announcing these plans to everyone, though, wasn't the most breaking news. In general, people were pleasantly surprised, a few of them even shocked, when the word got out that Miku and Kaito were a couple. They now spent most of their time together, usually behind a closed door every time they could find one. Everyone who had noticed the girl's struggles before must have admitted that she was suddenly beaming with energy and enthusiasm, while Kaito had a great boost in confidence. Things seemed to have worked out pretty well.

Sadly, not everyone was as happy as them.

"I should just give up," Luka muttered and breathed out a nicotine cloud. Her cigarette consumption has slightly increased since she heard the news.

The venue that they performed in that night had a metal staircase glued to its back; it was primarily a fire escape but judging from what the ground beneath looked like, it has probably been used by smokers for quite a while. At that particular moment, Luka was standing there, smoking, leaning on the railing and looking forward without actually seeing anything. She was accompanied by Rin who was sitting on the staircase, shifting her gaze from her friend towards the whirring city and back every now and then.

"I always try to be as selfless as I can," the woman continued; "because I'm happy when I can help people. And the _one_ time I actually want something for myself, this happens."

"I thought you didn't like Kaito?" the twin asked. "Not like _that,_ anyway."

"Well-" Luka stuttered. "I thought so too, but... he's just so sweet and funny and handsome..." She softly hit the metal bar in front of her with her fist. "And once again, Miku claims everything."

"What do you mean, once again?"

"Don't you see?" The girl took one last lungful of smoke and threw the cigarette butt to the depths below where it landed among all its predecessors left there by perhaps entire generations of musicians. "Miku has everything. _She_ is who everyone wants to see at a show, _she_ gets to record and perform all the cool songs while the rest of us can just grab the popcorn and let her enjoy it all. And _she_ is the one who steals everyone's hearts, including Kaito."

Luka felt tears rushing into her eyes and forced them to stay inside. She didn't want to cry when she wasn't alone.

"I thought I was okay with always being second in everything. But it's... it's just not fair anymore."

"Don't be such a downer," Rin said and frowned faintly. "You're not doing so bad. The show needs us all, you know that."

"Does it? Because I think Miku would be more than fine if she was doing this by herself. If she wants to have everything, maybe I should just let her."

"I know you're upset, but right now, you're just being ridiculous. Miku doesn't want everything, and you know it."

"Even if she doesn't, why does she always _get_ everything? It's ridiculous!"

"She doesn't _,_ cut it out already."

"Come on, just try and tell me one thing that I have and she doesn't!"

"Parents."

Suddenly, the girls were silent. Luka who was ready to retort something -anything -kept her mouth shut as her brain attempted to fully comprehend what she just heard. The twin suddenly froze too, and her eyes widened.

"Oooh shit," she muttered.

"What?" the pink singer slowly opened her mouth. "What are you saying to me?"

"Nothing," Rin replied. "Just... forget I said anything."

"I won't until you tell me that I don't have hearing problems. Are you saying-"

"For fuck's sake, yes!" she suddenly exclaimed. "Miku doesn't have parents. They're dead. And so am I if she finds out I told you this."

"...whoa." Luka's head spun; she had to sit down on the metal platform, a little bit in shock. "Jesus. I had no idea."

"Of course, how could you?" Rin was clearly angry at herself for letting her guard down so inconveniently. "Miku didn't want anyone to know. I'm the only one that she told this."

"...how..." was she could ask.

"Car crash. She was two or three when it happened. Her parents were driving home from a party or something, a bigass truck hit them, and that was it."

"Oh my god, that's terrible!" Luka was only slowly beginning to wrap her head around it. "And doesn't she have anyone else left?"

"Why do you think it is," the twin asked her, and her voice trembled just for a short moment, "that she keeps referring to us as her family? That's not just a phrase, we _are_ literally the only family she has right now. Except for this aunt who lives in some village outside of Sapporo, and they... they don't get along too well."

"How come?"

"Well, when her parents... died, her aunt was the one who had to start taking care of Miku instead of her own career. I think Miku thinks that she blames her for ruining her life." Rin snorted in disapproval. "Whatever the truth is, their relationship is pretty tense."

"So that's why she wanted to stay alone on the vacation!" Luka realised, and covered her head in her hands. "It all comes together now."

"Anyway," the blonde girl continued; "like I said, don't let her know that you know. She really doesn't want anyone to feel sorry for her. She wants us to treat her like a normal human person."

"Stupid girl!" Luka shouted. "Why doesn't she ever allow us to... just be there for her? She never tells us anything, and then she's surprised that we can't help her resolve the problems that we don't even know she has. Does that make any sense to you?"

"I mean, I should be lucky enough that she told me at _least_ this much."

The twin stood up and walked up closer to her, only to sit right next to her. She was frowning and her eyes spoke of a great concern; her expression made Luka wonder how long has Rin been keeping that secret from everyone. It would have been one thing if it was _just_ the information itself; but she was also apparently forced to play Miku's game and act like nothing was out of the ordinary in front of everybody. That subsequently meant that she had noone to share her worries with; she was the only one who knew at least one of the reasons behind her friend's state of mind.

"Do you think that's why she's... the way she is?" Luka asked after a while of quiet brainstorming. "I'm no psychologist, but... Miku is trying so hard to be cool with everything, trying to be happy... But then she starts feeling lonely and totally blacks out. I don't know, maybe it's because she didn't have anyone to love her as a kid, and she can't start to believe that she has people around her that care."

"I think so too," Rin agreed. "Why do you think I do whatever I can to cheer her up? I figured she should learn to accept that."

"How long have you known anyway?"

"Remember that fight we had about Doubleganger some two months ago? On the bus? Welp, when we arrived at the hotel that day, we kinda sat down and apologised. It turned into an honest talk about what was bothering us, and Miku brought up her parents." The twin looked at the sky and sighed. "Since then, I knew that I must never stop loving and encouraging the crap outta her at all times."

The pink girl felt an embarrasing pressure in her chest. Something clicked inside her head.

"Wow," she spoke up her mind; "I'm being a... **huge** prick to her. All the time. I always thought she was just a drama queen who needed attention."

"Well, on one hand... yeah, you're a prick," Rin snickered without joy. "On the ather hand, you're kinda right. She wants someone, _anyone_ , to love her because she needs to believe that she deserves being loved."

"So... Kaito...?"

"I guess so. Picture the scene -you're Miku, you're locked in the studio with a bunch of adults that you barely know, and everyone else is going to Disneyland with their families while you lie on your back and wish for someone to be there with you. And in comes Kaito, telling you that you're literally the only thing in the universe that's important to him. What other outcome could there be?"

Luka didn't know what to do next -her world was turning upside down. Eventually, she sighed and reached into her pocket to pull out her cigarettes again.

"You're smoking a lot," the twin nudged her with her elbow.

"Yeah, I know, shuddup," she said, lit one up and let the first batch of smoke circle around her respiratory system. "Wow. I just realised that I barely know Miku. I barely know anyone in here, actually. What were you like growing up, how many friends did you have in school, where did your parents take you for trips. Those are the things that really define who you are, not that bullshit like what's your favorite color or do you like pineapple on pizza."

"You're right, noone asks about that," Rin agreed. "But why do you suddenly think about that?"

"Because," Luka breathed out a small gray cloud; "I take for granted that everyone has parents that do things with them. Even if I only live with mom, me and dad still do shit together. But Miku, as you say, didn't have that. I genuinely wonder what her childhood was like."

"You can only hope she'll tell you someday. And you could start treating her a little better, now that you know this."

She sighed again. "Then I guess I should just let her and Kaito play rabbits, huh?"

"Hey." Rin softly caressed her arm. "You'll get him one day."

"Thanks."

"I mean it! The thing that's between the two of them... it's just not real. She told me her side of the story."

Luka smiled in inner torment. "What, did she tell you all the details about the time she spent under Kaito?"

"Okay, first of all... She said she likes being on top, actually." The twin giggled. "Sorry. The point is, she said she was lonely and needed to feel love, that's why it happened that first time, and that's the fuel that keeps their relationship driving. That doesn't count as a real relationship in my opinion. I wanna be happy for her, but... I really don't think it will last."

"People are weird, aren't they?" said Luka.

"I dunno about that, but things are never really straightforward, I'll tell you that much."

The older girl closed her eyes and laid down her head on Rin's; all that they have previously discussed left such a mess in her head that she simply needed an anchor to keep her grounded, both physically and mentally. Ironically, she came to understand at that very moment how important it was to have someone that she could lean on in her life, and she was grateful that she at least had the twin by her side. Rin seemed to undersand it because she placed her own head on Luka's shoulder, assuring her that she cared. It was the closest they could get to an actual hug without standing up.

Luka straightened her back soon because she didn't want to finish her cigarette right next to the twin's face. But before she could bring it to her mouth, she paused and inspected it as if it was the first cigarette she'd ever seen in her life -or rather as if she had just realised what she was doing. She honestly asked herself if it was actually giving her something that she couldn't live without. Then, she breathed in some fresh air and threw her unfinished smoke over the railing.

"I'm gonna stop smoking," she told Rin. "And I'm not going to be jealous anymore. Kaito and Miku seem to need each other right now, and he doesn't like me like _that_ anyway. And I don't wanna be the bad guy. I think I can go back to just being friends."

"That's the spirit!" her friend replied. "But I still think we're gonna laugh a lot one day. About you and Kaito, I mean."

"How can you be so sure?"

"I dunno. Weird things happen between two people. I would know."

Luka looked at her friend; she was suddenly smiling like a baby that just got its first lollipop.

"Is there something I don't know? Or someone?" she asked her.

Rin blushed a little. "Remember Ichiro?"

 _"Him?"_ she exclaimed. "I thought you hated his guts!"

"I thought I did! Buuuuuut... we sort of met a few days back, and it was..." The girl was suddenly short for words -for the first time that Luka remembered. "It was just like old times! He didn't care that I'm famous now, I'm still the girl he used to know. And he's so sweet and funny and charming and..." She giggled. "A better kisser than I remember."

"Whoa, look at you!" This lightened Luka's mood a small bit again. "So you two are a couple now, just like that?"

"I guess so! Although it's kinda hard being a couple when we never get to see each other. But get this: Ichiro's throwing a party at his house just after Christmas! And me and Len are both invited. I think _that_ might lead to something interesting." And Rin chuckled again.

Luka had a suspition that Ichiro might be just playing with the twin to get into her panties; something was odd about the two of them meeting after such a long time and immediately being head over heels for each other. At least Rin seemed to have lost her head for him -perhaps along with her cautiousness. Then again, Luka didn't know anything about this boy, except for what the girl herself told her. And she said it herself -weird things did happen. The pink woman decided to not say anything about it. If this was real, she didn't want to discourage Rin.

"That sounds awesome," she said instead and smiled. "You'll have to tell me all about it! But later. We should probably get back inside."

"Oh yeah, the show. I completely forgot." The twin laughed, both girls stood up and entered the building.

"Were you serious about quitting smoking?" Rin asked on the way to the living room.

"I should at least try. It's kinda getting out of hand, I wanna stop before it's too late."

"That's cool. But why now?"

"I don't know. It seems like a good time to make some changes."

Considering all the circumstances, it took her by surprise that when she went on the stage that evening, Luka felt refreshed and positive like rarely ever before. Having decided to throw all her troubles over the shoulder and start anew filled her with determination and excitement for the future. There was nowhere to go but up from that point forward. To her, life was never really about the chances she missed, but rather about those that she had yet to encounter.

Even the song ID, her duet with Miku that she had been somewhat insecure about before her conversation with Rin, felt great to perform again. Both girls were exuding so much positive energy -for different reasons -that the crowd was blown away at first, unsure how to respond to that. But at then end, everyone cheered like crazy, and Luka was so cheerful that she even dared to uncharacteristically give her friend a small hug right before she was supposed to leave the stage.

"What?" Miku laughed into her ear, confused but happy as well.

"Nothing. It was amazing," she simply replied and walked away with a big smile, leaving the star to continue the show.

Sure, learning the truth about Miku's family was a bummer. Luka was convinced that if Rin told it, for example, to Kaito instead, he would have immediately fallen into a state of deep, depressing compassion, proclaiming that he will be the one to make everything right. She thought differently. As the twin said, Miku didn't want anyone to make a big deal of it, and she wanted to respect that. It wasn't like the girl was still mourning for her own loss; she accepted that this was the way her life was going to be, even if there was still some leftover pain. Luka simply didn't want to take it more seriously than Miku herself.

Besides, she had a boyfriend to take care of her now. Luka's own feelings were irrelevant at the moment, mostly because she didn't want to get in the way of Kaito's happiness -his and Miku's, for that matter. On one hand, yes, it was still aching a little that the boy couldn't love her back; but ultimately, she was happy that at least the two of them got what they needed. And now that she knew she didn't have a chance with him anyway, she could eventually try to forget and move on.

It was strange, but for once, everything seemed right.


	10. Ch 10 - Hard Decisions

**CHAPTER 10: Hard Decisions**

 _No, no, no, no, no._ Miku was sitting on a closed toilet bowl, shivering and desperately trying not to freak out.

 _It's going to be okay,_ she kept telling herself. _It's going to be okay. Everything's going to be okay._

She had the whole package: she was confused, embarassed, angry, and most of all, frightened. And the fact that all that she could do for the last couple of minutes was to sit in anticipation made things way worse. Miku was counting down the seconds in her head, but they all felt at least an hour apart, as if they knew she was scared and wanted to postpone the moment of truth as much as possible.

Finally, she closed her eyes, held her breath, begged for a miracle, and ever so slowly looked at the pregnancy test in her hand.

The last two months were pretty much perfect for Miku. She cherished every second of time that she spent with Kaito; he gave her so much love over such a relatively short time span that she was finally beginning to let go of the doubts and fears that she had been carrying with her for her entire life. As a result, she was able to put more energy into her performances, and the recent shows were probably the best in their group's history.

But eventually, something slowly began to spoil her happiness. When she and Kaito were -for whatever reasons -separated for a longer amount of time, Miku started to ask herself some honest questions. Was this _true_ happiness, or was she lying to herself? She couldn't help but wonder how did she and the boy become a couple in the first place. She knew that he was in love with her before, but until that first night, she didn't think of him the same way.

Regardless of the angle she looked at it from, Miku couldn't stop thinking that she was maybe a giant hypocrite. It seemed as if she only was with Kaito either because they slept together, or because she was addicted to the feeling of being loved. Either way, she had to admit that she still didn't honestly like him in the romantic way and was therefore just using him.

Unfortunately, whenever her thoughts almost reached this point, she became too scared of herself to the point when she would immediately seek Kaito's comfort in which she could forget about all that, at least for the time being.

And this cycle would repeat itself until the last days of November with no evident way out. Because Miku felt horrible for even having those thoughts, she didn't tell anyone about them -not even Rin who knew almost all of her secrets. The star _knew_ that it would be most reasonable to explain everything to Kaito and hope that he would be understanding. Every other day when they were still together would make that breaking point harder on both of them. But the idea of that made it even more difficult for Miku to confront her boyfriend, and so her guilt was only growing stronger and stronger.

And then, in this mindset, she woke up early one morning feeling terribly sick and throwing up multiple times. Because it was a show day, she had to devour some pills in the evening just to be able to pull through, and she did so only with enormous self-control. At first, she assumed it was just a random illness; but she was born doubtful, and some other scenarios naturally started popping up inside her head.

A few days have passed, Miku's period was late, and she was losing her mind. There was always the possibility that she was simply nervous; she knew anxiety might cause that in a woman. However, she just didn't expect to be so lucky.

Of course she and Kaito usually used protection, but every once in a while -being young and stupid -if they had to pick between no sex or unprotected sex, they would choose the latter, hoping that they'd be careful enough. Knowing this, the chances of a small accident happening some time ago seemed higher and higher every day until she couldn't take it any longer. Under an oath of complete discreetness, she begged Meiko, the most mature woman in the group that she trusted, to get her a pregnancy test.

Miku took a quick, careful peek, and then stared at the small stick in her hand just to make sure her eyes weren't playing a trick on her. Her mouth moved slowly; she smiled, and then began to cry with relief. Her sobs, washing up all of the emotions that she had in her, were echoing through the hotel bathroom. Suddenly, her heart felt a million pounds lighter.

Maybe it wouldn't have been such a big deal under other circumstances. If she was actually pregnant, she would have talked to Kaito, and together, they'd have had to decide what to do next. If they then decided to have the baby together as a family, marriage wouldn't have been a problem -being a Japanese citizen, Miku was able to get married at her age already. Sure, things wouldn't have been easy, but it would have been the most responsible thing to do.

However, it would have been much more complicated for the fact that both of their careers were depending on being on the road and performing. Miku couldn't do that in the latest stages of her pregnancy, and even after the baby would've been born, she simply wouldn't be able to work as hard as before. She'd probably have to pick between the child and her work -much like her aunt when Miku's parents passed away. And while it wouldn't have been fair to the baby to rob it of its mother, she was scared that she'd eventually hate it for the same reason she thought her aunt hated _her_.

Luckily she didn't need to resolve any of that after all, but it made her think nevertheless. Neither she nor Kaito were ready for something like this; and who's to say that she would be this lucky next time? But the problem was, she realised that she could actually bring herself to sacrifice her career as a pop star to start a family -just not with Kaito. He wasn't the one she would want by her side as her husband, even if for no other reason than because she simply did not love him.

Someone knocked on the door. Miku flinched.

"Miku?" Luka's voice spoke up on the other side. "What's going on?"

"Nothing," she replied and forced herself to stop crying for a moment. "Go away."

"Are you sure? It doesn't sound like 'nothing' to me."

"Yes, please leave me alone," she retorted and sniffed.

Luka pushed the handle down, and Miku realised that she forgot to lock the door.

"Oh. I was actually going to ask Rin for help." The woman took a step inside. "What are you-"

Her eyes widened when she saw Miku covered in tears and the pregnancy test she was hectically trying to hide in her hands.

"Wait, what? Are you talking about me?" the twin shouted somewhere behind the corner.

"Oh my god, is that...?" Luka quietly asked, ignoring Rin's question.

"Oh, um..." Miku attempted to reply, but because she was panicking, she didn't say anything but a short series of incoherent syllables.

Blonde hair emerged in the door. "What's going on in here? Sorry, I'm talking to- whoa!"

"I'm not pregnant!" the star managed to spoke up exhaustedly. "It's fine."

Her two friends were looking at her with a mix of shock and relief.

"You know what," said Rin; "I can't think of anything to say to that, I'm just gonna walk away and pretend I didn't see this." With that, she turned around and left the hotel room; the door softly thumped behind her around the corner. Luka was looking behind her until she was gone; then, she turned her head back towards Miku with such expression that the girl felt tears coming back to her eyes.

"I know you're upset, but can you please just hug me now and yell at me later?" she asked her in a shaky voice. Luka sighed and did as she was asked; Miku held onto her and sobbed into her shoulder.

"You should stop being such a crybaby, you know?" the woman told her; Miku giggled shortly. "You're crying too much."

"It's just..." she managed to calm down just a little, but enough to stop weeping for the moment. "I can't... I can't shake off this feeling that all the bad things happen to _me_ all the time. I can't take it." She sniffed.

"Well that's bullshit," said Luka. "First of all, you're _not pregnant_ and that's good, right?"

"But I could have been! It's been the only thing on my mind for the last week, I just can't function like this!"

"Then don't! Honey, you take everything too personally. It's like all your emotions are ten times bigger than they should."

Miku understood immediately what her friend was implying. She'd been thinking about it for some time: apparently she was taking everything that has been happening in her life too seriously. Meiko or Rin, for example, were able to move through all the hardships with ease; that was a skill that Miku admired, but never learned it herself -it seemed incomprehensible to her. She could literally turn into a different person with each new impulse, sometimes changing from an enthusiastic shining comet all the way down to a dark, absent-minded black hole in an instant. She always thought this was usual, but she had been noticing lately that other people felt differently -which only strengthened Miku's belief that something was seriously wrong with her.

This would have been hard enough on its own, but once again, she was a performer -and a very serious performer of that, in the sense of having minimum space for her own personality on stage since every little detail had been carefully planed beforehand and expected to be carried out identically every time. Miku had to come out every evening smiling, dancing and singing like nothing was wrong, and the necessity to put on a joyful mask on her face a lot of times was taking its toll.

Nobody who knew that something was going on was really able to help her. Rin was probably doing the best work by just being a crazy careless friend: when the two of them were alone, Miku was able to forget everything a little and pretend she was happy. But Luka, for instance, had the idea that she could simply _stop_ having these problems. She meant well, but in reality, she made it seem so unbelievably easy that Miku was even more upset in herself that she couldn't do it.

As for Kaito, he was convinced that her troubles could be "healed" by his unconditional and constant love. And while she appreciated it, the moments spent with him felt like a lie that she'd been telling herself. She didn't love him the same way -she only loved the feeling of being in love, or at least pretending so. It made her feel more like a normal human being in a way, but it wasn't fair to use him like that, and Miku was coming to realise that more and more every day.

"Are you even listening to me?" she suddenly heard Luka ask her. She looked up: her friend was looking at her, part worried, part impatient.

"No," Miku let out a deep sigh. "I'm sorry. I think I should be alone right now."

"Are you sure? I'm here for you all the way if you want."

"Yes, thank you. I have to... sort some things out first." She forced herself to smile. "I'll talk to you in the evening."

"If you say so," Luka said, smiled as well stood up. "Just remember that we all love you, okay?"

"I love you too. Thank you."

 _I may love you guys too much to let you put up with my crap,_ she thought when Luka walked away. _I need to make some things right._

* * *

In the evening, not long after the show, Miku asked Kaito if they could speak in private. She wouldn't let him even touch her, fearing that she might not be strong enough to go through with it. It was hard enough as it was, and she didn't want to remind her body of how pleasant it felt to be, to put it delicately, treated with love.

The venue they were in had an underground parking lot; the two of them went down there and onto the bus, knowing that everyone else will probably stay behind until the time came to get on the road. Kaito felt something wasn't right: he was frowning and didn't say anything for the entire time they were walking.

"So," he finally said when they sat next to each other in the bus kitchen.

"So," she repeated and hated herself for what she was about to do. "I... Dammit, it's hard to talk about this."

Kaito reflexively moved his hand to comfort her, but stopped immediately, sensing her refusing posture. To cover it up, he stroked his hair nervously and laid his hand on the table. Miku noticed his fingers were shaking a little bit.

 _He knows,_ she thought, and almost felt like throwing up again.

"Listen," she spoke up. "I just need to set things straight between us."

Silence. She breathed out and briefly closed her eyes.

"I... I can't keep doing this to you, Kaito. You're such a sweet, nice and caring guy, and... you don't deserve this. I tried, I wanted to love you _so much_ , but I just can't. I thought that I did, I thought that I _should_. But the thing that should be there... It's just not there on my side."

Silence. Miku would rather throw herself into a volcano than press on, but she had to be strong. This was the right thing to do.

"Every day that we're together makes it harder for me. Harder to pretend that the feeling is there, and harder to pull back and stop lying to myself. And to you. I don't want to hurt you ever, and I fear that the longer we would have been together, the more I would have had to hurt you sometime in the future. It... It makes more sense to end this right here and right now, before it's... before it's too late."

She finally turned her head and looked at him. Kaito was just sitting there motionless and he looked like he was about to be executed.

"Can you accept this, Kaito? I don't want to stop talking to you, I don't _hate_ you. I just wish that we could go back to just being friends. And I know that's not a fair thing to ask either... But, I hope that we can at least try. I can't be anything more to you, probably not ever. I just don't want to completely lose you, and I'm afraid that I would've lost you more likely if we kept this thing between us going. Can you understand it?"

Once again, the bus went silent. He was looking at his hand on the table, Miku was looking at him, feeling lighter but also heavier at the same time and just waiting for the boy to finally say something.

After what felt like the first second of eternity, Kaito moved; he breathed in and out as deeply as he could.

"Wow," he simply stated. "That's... wow. I mean, it's not... It's not totally unexpected."

He seemed calm on the outside, but she could tell his heart had been shattered into pieces: his voice was almost inaudible, his hands were still shaking, and he refused to look at her in the slightest.

"I wasn't really happy either, you know?" Kaito continued. "I would have done anything for you. I needed to love you, I had no other option. I know we don't go together, but I refused to believe it. You're right, something was missing between us."

He straightened his back and looked in front of him absent-mindedly, probably thinking about what to say next. Miku watched him, slightly surprised by his confession.

He finally turned his head towards her. "I get what you're trying to say. We tried, and it didn't work out. It's probably best if we do move on from here. I guess I just needed to hear that from you."

Kaito wasn't able to smile at her with his mouth, but his eyes somehow looked more concrete all of a sudden.

"I don't know how hard it's gonna be, but... I will try my best to be your friend in the future."

 _Poor Kaito,_ Miku thought. _Poor typical Kaito. Something bad's happening to him, and he's just giving in._ He wanted to sound confident and in control, probably not to let her see that he was heartbroken; but she could tell how difficult it actually was for him, regardless of what he was saying. To hurt him like this, it hurt her a thousand times more. He really didn't deserve to be with someone like her.

They hugged slowly and appreciated the last moment they'd spend together as a couple. Miku knew that the second they let go, they will both be single again; she felt sad, but at the same time relieved that it was all over -in particular, this talk she was so scared to have.

After a while, they pulled back, and they were suddenly two separate people.


	11. Ch 11 - The Party

**CHAPTER 11: The Party**

Ichiro's parents were wealthy, no doubts about that. To Len, their house was like a palace. It was a two-story building full of empty space -most of the furniture, save for details such as a dining table and a giant sofa in front of the television, was looming above the room around the walls. This arrangement doubled the sense of greatness, but as their host told them, the upper floor looked way less majestic, probably because his parents were never taking any guests upstairs.

Usually, it was just Ichiro's small 3-piece family living in the house, but Rin's boyfriend made sure to invite as many guests as he could when he had the opportunity. Most of the people there were the twins' old friends from school; a few of them brought siblings or more friends. As a result, there were around thirty people occupying the house.

Ichiro didn't have a real reason to host this party, he simply loved having people around. Len suspected a little bit that he wanted to use this chance to brag about the house. The twin didn't like him all that much; before the Vocaloid tour began, he used to think that the boy was a bad influence on his sister. She would have been a bit rebellious by herself, but while he, being a good brother, would sometimes try and talk her out of her recklessness, Ichiro seemed to encourage it. Len didn't trust him.

He did, however, trust Rin's judgement. When she said that Ichiro was a completely different person now, he chose to believe her and give the boy another chance.

Len wasn't nearly as careless as others sometimes thought. He simply chose not to participate in most of what was going on around him. He was the exact opposite of his sister: while she was vocal and dived head first into everything, _he_ thought twice and then two times more before he took any action. He prefered to sort things out in his head before expressing his statement.

Because of his observant nature, it immediately caught his attention that Miku and Kaito broke up about a month ago. All of a sudden, they almost completely stopped talking and rarely could be seen in the same room together. Both of them were trying to pretend that nothing was wrong, but Len saw clearly how devastated they both were.

Because he felt like it wasn't his place to ask any questions, he didn't know any details except for what his sister told him. Apparently they initially wanted to stay friends, but the breakup took such a toll on both of them that they just couldn't bear talking to each other.

Their gloominess partially affected all the rest of them as well. Rin was running out of patience with Miku who was, figuratively speaking, constantly crying on her shoulder. Luka was left to take care of Kaito; she was understanding, but at the same time, she was too sensitive towards other people's emotions -so much so that she soon began feeling down herself and quietly blamed Miku for it.

Fortunately, Christmas holidays were right around the corner, and everyone was sort of relieved to leave all the drama behind. Len was optimistic: he believed that everything will be better when they come back together. And even if not, there were only two more shows left in that tour. Nothing _that_ wrong could happen during that time.

"It's been so long," a voice right next to him suddenly spoke up; "and you still wear the same expression."

Len turned his head to see Meg, a former classmate, looking directly at him with a frisky smile. He had been sitting on the sofa for a while, just watching the people around the kitchen-living room area move around. The girl must have just arrived, he didn't see her before.

Meg had always been an interesting person -kind of wacky and all over the place, but in a different way than Rin. People seemed to like her, but they were also a little bit afraid of her because no-one could estimate what she was going to do in the next moment. She looked completely ordinary, a girl of average height and short-ish black hair; her personality was then all the more shocking because of that.

When they were kids, she was known for being very fond of chewing gum. They used to call her Gumi because of that, and this nickname would last even after she grew tired of her gum affection.

"Oh, hey, Gumi!" Len greeted her. She laughed and briefly hugged him, literally taking his breath away. "I wouldn't expect you here."

"Why not?" she asked and gave him some space to breathe again.

"I dunno, I just didn't think these kind of parties were your thing," he explained and smiled. "But I'm glad you're here."

"Me too!" Gumi looked around the room. "Is Rin here too?"

"Oh yeah, she's probably upstairs. Ichiro wanted to show her the house." Len frowned. "Quite some time ago, actually."

"Ah, I wish you could've been here when he told us the big news!" The girl proceeded to imitate Ichiro's low-pitched, confident voice. "'Dudes, I'm dating Rin Kagamine! The famous pop star! I'm better than you!"

"Did he really say that?"

"Nah, I'm paraphrasing." Gumi smirked.

Len let out a deep sigh. "Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks Ichiro is a douche."

"Right? I don't know why is everyone buying it. But," she giggled; "you know what they say. Guys with such ego probably compensate for something else."

"You've been here for two minutes and already you're talking about wieners." The twin forced the thought of Ichiro's parts and how they might interact with his sister out of his head. "What if you just told me how have you been the entire time?"

"Alright." Gumi hopped up on the sofa and laid down with her head on Len's lap before he had the chance to protest. Her innocent smile when she looked up at him was a bulletproof argument.

"Let's see," she said; "I stopped taking piano lessons. It was boring and I was only going there because of my parents, but I started feeling old enough to make my own decisions."

"Well, good for you, I guess." The twin wasn't sure how to respond to that, in part because he wasn't used to people violating his comfort zone like that. "I can't tell you if that's a good thing or a bad thing, I never heard you play."

"Good! I would've permanently damaged your sense of hearing." Gumi frowned and looked at him again. "But you know what, I've been... kinda thinking about trying to sing."

"Oh? Did me and Rin inspire you by any chance?"

"No! I mean, sort of. Fine," she continued when she saw Len was grinning. "When you guys were gone, and then when I listened to your songs, I was kinda jealous. Not because of you're famous now, just because... I would love to do what you do. Travel the world and sing for people." Gumi sighed. "But I can't sing."

"You think so?"

"Yeah. I dunno why," she finally sat back up; "but I'm too... scared, I guess, even when I'm alone. I've been trying to sing some random stuff, but I always forget how to use my voice."

"Hey," said Len, suddenly enthusiastic that they were talking about his passion. "That's completely normal."

"Really? Did you have this too?"

"I bet I did in the beginning, but I've been singing longer than I can remember. Our Kaito, though, he was super shy at first. When we first got together in the studio, there was a vocal coach telling us a whole bunch of stuff, including how to overcome our shyness."

"And what did you learn?"

"Welp," Len stretched his arms; "most of the time when people are too shy to sing, it means they're not confident enough. So there's a lot of work going into developing your voice, especially your muscle memory. Eventually your body's gonna know exactly what to do, and you can focus on other things, like doing the dance routine right."

Gumi was hanging on his every word. "So you never get nervous on stage?"

"Sometimes I do," he confessed. "And that's normal as well. But the best thing you can do at that point is to just dive in and believe in yourself. Your brain gets scared of nothing sometimes, you have to develop a sense of reason. At least that's what the coach told us."

"Wow." His friend blinked. "I never realised how much work do you guys put into all that. You know, for us mere mortals, you just come, sing a couple of songs and leave again. It seems so... effortless."

"Like I said, there's a lot going on behind the curtain that makes us what we are. So what I'm saying is," Len softly pressed his fist against Gumi's shoulder; "don't worry. If you really wanna do this, all you have to do is practise, practise, practise. I could hook you up with some people who could help you out. If you wanted."

"Really?"

"Totally! But you'll have to be absolutely sure you wanna do this for real. These people don't like to waste their time." He gave her an encouraging smile. "Just think about that. If it's still gonna be a good idea tomorrow, let me know."

Before he knew it, Len had Gumi wrapped all around him again.

"You're the best!" she told him before pulling away. "I swear I'll make you proud."

"Geez, you ever heard about personal space? You almost broke my ribs."

Gumi giggled and put on a daydreaming face. "Well, if I'm gonna be like you guys, I guess I should dye my hair, too. Green is still available, right?"

Len laughed. "Please don't. I can't imagine you with green hair."

"By the way," she was already moving on to another subject; "what is it like to be famous? When I heard you'll be here, I thought everybody's gonna freak out and ask for autographs."

"Yeah, well, these guys-" he gestured towards the room around them where someone was just passing homemade cookies while others were passing shots; "-they are cool. They knew me before we took off, and I'm just the same boy I used to be while I'm here. Which is great. I kinda missed this. Me and Rin had some... interesting fangirl encounters some time ago. I don't want the whole world to be like that."

"I saw some random selfies on the internet the other day," Gumi smirked. "You, Rin and two girls, one of tham had a red ribbon, does that ring a bell?"

"I think so..." Len concentrated on his memories. "Yes! They met us and our parents while we were on a break two... no, three months ago. It was adorable."

"I would think so! But it was also hilarious to me, they basically wrote a letter under that picture explaining how much you two mean to them and how this was the opportunity of a lifetime, and I was just sitting there and laughing because I get to get in touch with you whenever I want. It was awesome."

Len's phone beeped in his pocket.

"Excuse me," he said to his friend and looked at the phone. He had a message from Miku.

The twin opened the message and froze. He felt the smile on his face melting away like snow in Spring.

"What's the matter?" Gumi asked.

And Len who had never in his life said a bad word muttered: "Holy fuck."

* * *

"I don't know," said Rin.

"Come on," Ichiro insisted, and his fingers were softly playing with her knee. "It's gonna be awesome."

The two of them were lying in his bed upstairs, behind the locked door of Ichiro's bedroom. The room was suspiciously tidy, as though the boy had cautiously cleaned it just for the occasion of bringing Rin inside. There was a desk with his computer by the wall, an expensive black bass guitar in the corner, and that was pretty much it. It was certainly cleaner than her bedroom back home.

Ichiro and Rin were still fully dressed at that point, but he was persistently trying to change that.

"I don't know," she repeated after a few seconds of silence.

"Are you nervous?"

"I don't know. I think I'm just..." Rin gulped. "Does it have to be today?"

"When else?" Ichiro's hand moved from her knee onto her thigh. "You're going away soon, and god knows when we'll get another chance."

"You know I'm coming back at the end of January." She closed her eyes and focused on his gentle touch, but forced herself to snap back into reality quickly. She didn't want to show him how pleasant it was.

"I don't wanna wait another month." Ichiro leaned forward and gave her a kiss. "Come on, don't you like me or what?"

Rin smiled faintly. "Of course I do, Ichi. But... This is my first time we're talking about. I wanna do it right."

"Hey, it's my first time too. But how bad could it be?" He was looking at her like she was the only thing in the universe that mattered. "Come on. Don't be scared."

"I'm not scared."

"So why don't you just wanna do it?"

Unbeknownst to him, Rin actually wanted it. She went to his house on that evening filled with anticipation, and she was almost sure it was going to happen. She just wanted to tease Ichiro a little longer; she thought it was funny to pretend like she wasn't interested. In reality, she was just waiting for him to turn his words into action; she needed him to force her into at least a little.

Also, she _was_ nervous, quite understandably. The mere idea of sleeping with someone was so surreal to her, and now she was about to enter the surreality. She had no idea what to expect from it -everyone was always saying it was the best thing ever, and Rin didn't know if maybe her expectations weren't too high. What if she didn't like it -what if _he_ didn't like it with her?

"Why now?" she kept playing for time. "We have the whole night ahead of us. You should attend to your guests."

"I have the whole night to attend to my guests," Ichiro counterattacked. "But I just like you so much, I can't wait any longer."

Rin chuckled. "That's so nice to listen to. Can you tell me more?"

"I like the way you giggle," he whispered and covered her face in smooches. "I like the way you look, I like the way you smell, I like the way you breathe..." His face, still snuggling with hers, was getting lower and lower until it stopped on her neck. Rin's heartbeat accelerated.

"Ichi..." she sighed quietly; she reached out and placed her hand on the back of his neck, partly to stop him from moving even further and partly to prevent him from pulling away. "Please..."

"I like your neck," he simply stated and kept on smooching it. A weird feeling of energy ran through her entire body, and Rin felt her guard finally lowering.

 _Oh my gosh, it's really happening,_ she thought. But instead of panicking as she thought she would, something took control over her body, and she simply let her hands travel around Ichiro's torso. She closed her eyes and let the feeling of his body against hers overwhelm her. His lips on her own, his left hand slowly finding its way underneath her shirt-

Somebody decided to knock heavily on the door at that exact moment.

"Go away!" was Ichiro's immediate reaction.

"It's me, Len!" the other twin called behind the door. "Please, I have to talk to Rin!"

"I'm busy!" Rin shouted in response.

"Please come out," her brother pleaded and tried to open the door -but, of course, it was locked. "It's about Miku!"

"I don't care about Miku right now!"

Len groaned. "Just... look at your damn phone, will you? It's bad!"

"Fiiiine," she replied and gave Ichiro a sad look. "I'm sorry, he won't shut up unless I look at my damn phone."

Her boyfriend got off of her with a murderous expression. Rin quickly reached into her pocket and saw that she had a message from Miku. She opened it and read through.

* * *

 _To all my friends._

 _I want to thank you for everything that you did for me. You all tried to help me with my problems in one way or another, and I'm grateful for that._

 _But my problems are beyond solving. None of you know what it's like living in my head. I'm scared all the time. I can't enjoy anything anymore, and I don't want to make your lives miserable just because I can't get over my shit. I don't want you to try and save me just because you think it's expected of you. I never expected this of anybody but myself, and I can't do anything._

 _I never achieved anything in my life. Every decision I ever made was bad, and I can't keep on living like this. Every second I spend alive, I fear that it's going to be even worse, and I have to stop this._

 _It ends tonight. I hope you can understand._

 _Goodbye, M._


	12. Ch 12 - The Bridge

_Sidenote: Sorry for changing the update date several times without notice! I just couldn't wait any longer to resolve this mess. I care about these guys like they're my own friends._

* * *

 **CHAPTER 12: The Bridge**

It was a late evening at the end of December, so the roads weren't particularly crammed. A random car would pass by every once in a while, and even less pedestrians. The feeling of emptiness was growing even greater when it began to snow, making the general visibility worse and worse by the minute.

 _So lonely,_ her inner voice sneered at her. _There is nobody to stop you. You know this has to happen._

Miku was too exhausted to argue. Not physically; she was tired of the constant feeling of fear, hopelessness, anxiety -and loneliness.

With the hood of her plain dark blue hoodie pulled over her forehead, she was mechanically moving forward, aimlessly roaming through the streets and letting the darkness consume her. In the end, she was able to find solace in it. It was the only thing that had always been certain in her life, the only thing that really felt like an actual part of her.

And yet, something else in her was still holding on. Even though she knew there was no coming back -she wrote a message to everyone who meant a damn thing to her to say goodbye and she left all her personal belongings back at her aunt's house. There was no turning back. But _still,_ she wanted someone, anyone, to come after her and stop her. She needed to be saved, or rather to be proven wrong. She needed to hear that her life has meaning, that it's going somewhere better.

But nobody came.

 _And nobody ever will, either. You are nothing, and you deserve to be nothing._

Miku was too dried out to cry anymore. She distanced herself from any emotions. Even trying to remember all the times in her life when she screwed up -or when she had something precious and lost it -felt as distant as though she had seen all of it in a crappy movie a long time ago. There was just an empty undefined void inside her now.

 _Useless things don't deserve to exist._

This was the last test. If she was meant to be saved, someone or something would save her on that evening. And if not...

At least this was finally a good decision to make.

Miku looked to her right: there was a bridge standing over the river and connecting two halves of the park surrounding it. She sighed and turned her steps towards it.

* * *

Whenever Luka later tried to describe what happened that night, her memories were kind of blurry, but she always said that a superior entity must have been present among them.

The first miracle was that she and Kaito were at the time visiting the city of Asahikawa which was less than two hours away from Sapporo. Had they been all the way in Tokyo with their families, they never would have been able to make it in time; but the two of them were, after the stress of the last month with the Vocaloids, trying to spend at least a few days as far from everything as they could.

It was the end of December, which meant that the Asahiyama zoo in Asahikawa started doing the penguin walks -literally just the zoo's penguins going for a walk through the area. It was one of the most adorably amazing things Luka ever saw, and it was even more precious to her to see Kaito smiling ear to ear -a rather rare occurrence ever since his breakup with Miku.

As per usual, Luka was trying her best to help him get back on his feet. One day at a time, she managed to make Kaito feel _somewhat_ better, but it was still a work in progress. At least this time, he could actually be sure that getting over Miku was the only reasonable thing to do, since she made it clear that there is no possible future for them. He explained to Luka that he subconsciously knew it before, but needed to hear it from his girlfriend to start believing it.

In the evening after they came back to the hotel from the zoo, Kaito passed out in his bed while Luka sat on hers at the opposite side of the room trying to read The Master and Margarita, an old novel that Naomi recommended to her. The story was a bit chaotic at the beginning, and she lifted her gaze every once in a while because Kaito's barely audible snoring was preventing her from spacing out entirely. She couldn't help but smile; the boy looked so cute when he was asleep.

 _Stop this, girl,_ she called herself out. _We've already been there, you know where thinking these things would lead you._

Her phone vibrated on the nightstand. Luka took a peek at it: she saw she had a message from Miku. She almost considered not even looking at the message, she was still upset with her. But eventually she thought that she could at least _read_ it. She didn't have to text back unless it was something really important.

What she saw in that message caught her completely by surprise.

"Kaito!" she spoke up, and when the boy didn't immediately wake up, Luka jumped up and forward and shook his shoulder. "Kaito!"

"Wha..?" he mumbled, opened his eyes and smiled at her -and then he frowned again when he saw the look on her face. "What's the matter?"

Without a single word, Luka handed him her phone. Kaito stared at Miku's goodbye letter, and his face was slowly turning pale like sugar.

"No..." he whispered, and his breathing was getting heavier and heavier. "This... this can't be happening!"

"Kaito!" she grabbed him by his shoulders and forced him to look at her. "Please, don't panic. I'm gonna try calling her, and if she doesn't answer, we'll call the police. It's gonna be alright."

Just as Luka suspected, Miku's phone didn't answer -she must have turned it off. On top of that, Kaito -who had in the meantime checked his own phone to see that the exact same message had been delivered to him -suddenly received a call, apparently from either one of the twins.

"Yes, we just read it," he said. "Luka is here. Yeah. I know. _I know!_ Listen, just... I don't know. It's..."

"For fuck's sake, gimme that!" Luka pulled the phone from his hand and put it next to her ear. "Hello?"

"Luka?" Rin's trembling voice spoke up in the speaker. "What... What are we..."

"Honey, I need you to focus, ok? Where are you right now?"

"At Ichiro's place. Me and Len both."

"Okay," said Luka. "I want both of you to go home ASAP. Stay there, and try calling Miku every once in a while. Leave the rest to me and Kaito, we're gonna call the cops and we'll keep you updated, got it?"

Rin sniffed. "Okay. But... I'm scared..."

"Me too, honey. But please, stay strong, ok? For me and for Miku."

"...ok."

Luka hung up. "Kaito, do you have a number for anyone in the management?"

"Uhh," he stuttered; "no, I don't."

"Shit, me neither. You know what," she gave him his phone back; "please call the police, you know Miku better than I do. I'll call Meiko, she's in touch with everybody else."

Kaito just sat at the bed staring at the phone screen. "I... can't. I don't know what to do."

"Dude. Look at me." Luka kneeled in front of him and took his hand into hers. "I know you're scared, but I need your help right now. And so does Miku. You can freak out all you want _after_ we do all that we can to save her. So please-" her grip tightened a little bit before letting go. "Call the fucking cops, okay? Tell them as much as you can: what she looks like, where she lives, and any details that might help lead them to her.

Oh, and," she added before dialing Meiko's number; "please ask them to be as discrete as possible. The last thing we need is the news to get involved in this."

In the future, Luka had no idea how she and Kaito were able to pull it all off. The boy somehow managed to tell the police what they needed to hear; the officer promised to call back with any news. Their first stop was about to be at Miku's house, somewhere right between Sapporo and the smaller city of Ebetsu; at least this time the singer was obligated to spend the holidays there so the police were able to look up exactly where to go.

Meanwhile, Luka was on phone with Meiko who promised to contact the management.

"Thanks a ton," she told her. "I wish we could do more. I would run into a blizzard for her, but me and Kaito are stuck in Asahikawa."

Meiko was quiet for two seconds before replying.

"You know, Sammy lives in Asahikawa with his fiancée. I could ask him to drive you over to Sapporo if you wanted."

"You would do that?" she exclaimed.

"Sure. I think you should definitely go. You two are the only ones at least remotely nearby."

"You are just the best, Mei!" Luka smiled lightly. "And if Sammy is willing to help us, I'll pay at least a hundred drinks for him."

Thirty minutes later, she was sitting on the backseat of Sammy's car looking at the back of Kaito's head. The stage manager, otherwise very vocal, was upset and barely said anything. At first, Luka thought he was grumpy because he had to be a taxi driver for the two, but after a while she realised Sammy was just worried about Miku.

On the road, the police contacted them again. Miku was not at her home; this apparently came as a complete surprise to her aunt who claimed she didn't even hear her leave the house. The cops were at the moment calling in reinforcements to search the city and its surroundings. So far, no random citizens had called to report witnessing a suicidal teenage girl, which was at the same time good and bad news. The twins have called a couple of times too, either to tell them that Miku's phone was still unavailable, or to just hear some comforting voices. Luka was guessing they were probably dying of anxiety back in their home.

It wasn't until they were on the road for about twenty minutes that Luka's adrenaline rush finally faded away. Now that there was suddenly nothing left to do but sit and wait, she realised she wasn't able to recall much of what she had just done. Apparently she organised the search operation without even thinking straight. She _knew_ right away what had to be done, and when it all came back to her, she suddenly became frightened. She was able to put the fear for her friend's life aside for the time being, but suddenly, when she wasn't occupied anymore, the thought finally reached her.

Miku was about to kill herself.

"What's your plan now, anyway?" Sammy suddenly asked. "Now that we know she's not at home, are we just gonna drive all over the city until we somehow find her?"

Neither Luka nor Kaito were able to answer that at first. The girl sniffed quietly.

"I don't know," Kaito finally muttered. "But we... need to at least do _something_."

Luka realised that her heart had been pounding hectically against her ribcage as if it was trying to escape. She buried her face in her hands and shut her eyes close.

"By the way, Luka," the boy addressed her from the front; "the cops said that Miku's _aunt_ didn't know she was gone... Does Miku not live with her parents?"

She didn't answer -she was too busy trying to cry silently so that the guys wouldn't notice.

"Oh, come on, Luka!" she heard his voice in front of her; she lifted her gaze and saw that Kaito was looking at her with forced encouragement. "Please don't cry. Miku will be alright. We'll make sure of it."

At that second, Luka wished for nothing more than for Kaito to be sitting next to her and comfort her.

* * *

Some fifteen minutes before entering Ebetsu, close to midnight, the police had called once again.

"They found her," said Kaito after he hung up, but his tone implied that it wasn't over yet. "On the Ishikario bridge. She's... still... up there..." His voice faded away.

"Ishikario," Sammy repeated. "Is that the one over the Riverside Park?"

"Jesus, I don't know!" Luka retorted. Kaito only shrugged.

"It's okay. I remember, it's the one," their driver reassured them. "Let's see if we can make a difference."

Luka started to feel more nervous than ever before -and probably even after. In her head, she tried to come up with some kind of speech to help Miku realise just how much she cares about her and how taking her life is a horrible idea. But she couldn't come up with anything, the anxiety was effectively blocking all the smarter brain cells that night.

Suddenly, flashing red lights were right in front of them. A police car was standing at the Ishikario bridge's beginning, and two officers were right next to it -a thin young man and a sturdy grandpa with a gray mustache. A handful of bystanders were there, keeping their distance from the cops and watching what the heck was going on -it was apparent that they had been forbidden to cross the bridge. When Sammy pulled over, Luka could clearly see two shadowy figures up on the bridge. One of them was just standing there; the other one, comparatively small, was sitting on the railing with their feet dangling in the air.

"Miku!" Luka shouted and basically fell out of the car before it even fully stopped. She walked swiftly towards the police officers who were eyeballing her curiously. "Excuse me, can I go up there?"

"I'm sorry," said the grandpa. "The bridge is currently closed. There's a situation-"

"I know there is!" she interrupted. "It's my friend up there! We're the ones who called you in the first place!"

The officers looked past her to see Sammy and Kaito approach the scene as well.

"Well," the policeman's mustache shook as the man smiled softly. "If you speak the truth, we are more than grateful for your notice. You might have just saved your friend's life."

Luka smiled back bashfully. "So, can we-"

"I'm afraid not. Do not worry, we have the situation under control."

Her smile faded away immediately. "Under control? She's still up there and ready to jump!"

"We have our man talking to her," the younger officer said. "He will get her down here safely."

Luka didn't give up. "But we _have_ to talk to her! We're her friends, and..."

"We understand that, and we're sorry," said the grandpa and briefly placed his hand on her shoulder. "The guy up there is a trained professional, he knows how to talk to... your friend. If anything so sudden happened like you running up to her, she might still panic and let go. It's for the best if you just put your trust in us."

"But..."

"Please go back to your car and wait if you want to. But do not interfere."

"Yeah, 'running up to her' my ass," Sammy mumbled as the trio returned to the vehicle. "They probably just fear we might say something stupid and fuck up." He opened the car door, dug up a pack of cigarettes and closed the door again. Then, he turned around and walked a few feet to the side while lighting one of his cigarettes.

"Well," Kaito sighed. "Not what I was hoping for, but at least we're... we're not too late."

Luka wasn't really paying attention. She slid down by the car's side and sat down on the road. Tears we running down her face again. "Why..." was all she managed to say before she started sobbing aggressively.

Kaito was right in front of her in a second.

"Don't worry," he told her. "They've got this. I trust them."

"That..." she gave a hiccup. "That's not... W-why did we even... come here... if we c-can't... do anything..."

The boy scooped closer and held her protectively; she held on back to him like he was the sole weight keeping her from floating away.

"We're here," he said; "that is what matters."

Luka nodded, accidentally wiping her eyes on his coat.

"Did you hear that?" Kaito continued and caressed her back. She shook her head -she was frankly too distracted to care about her surroundings. "The officer was telling someone on the radio that we're here. Describing us. Maybe that guy up there will tell Miku that we came."

"Let's... h-hope..." she mumbled, a tiny bit reassured.

When she calmed down, the two of them stood up and walked up as close as they could, silently watching the two figures on the bridge. It took an awfully long time and seemingly nothing happened -except they eventually noticed that the officer was slowly, bit by bit, moving closer and closer to Miku. Of course they couldn't overhear what the two were talking about, but apparently the girl was getting more and more comfortable with his presence. In the meantime, the policemen in front of them were talking with someone on their walkie-talkies; Luka and Kaito were able to deduce that there was another police car at the opposite side of the bridge, along with an ambulance -and Miku's aunt.

It felt like an eternity before the man on the bridge came close enough to softly grab the girl by her waist, carefully pull her back and sit her down safely.

Luka felt like cheering, but given the circumstances, it wouldn't have been appropriate. In any way, an enormous weight has been lifted as fast as a fingers' snap.

"She..." the girl said quietly, afraid she still might be speaking too soon. "She's alright..."

Next to her, Kaito breathed out with relief and placed his arm around her waist. "She is. See?"

Before she knew it, Luka was hanging on his neck again and crying for the third time that night. Only this time, her tears were happy.


	13. Ch 13 - The Show Must Go On

**CHAPTER 13: The Show Must Go On**

"What?" Rin asked and blinked.

"Like I said," Mrs Sakamoto quickly reassured her; "it's just a suspicion so far. We have to rule out everything else before we can be absolutely sure."

"No, I mean, what even is that? I've literally never heard that before."

Kaito understood the impact of the woman's words a little better than the twin, but he too had a lot of questions right out of the gate.

A little less than a week after that horrifying night, the management had him, Luka, Meiko and the Kagamine siblings gathered in the headquarters. There were still two shows left to do in January, and now that Miku had gone to therapy and thus was unable to perform, the company had to decide what to do next.

Before that would be established, though, the remaining Vocaloids found themselves in a conference room with Mrs Sakamoto, Miku's appointed therapist who came to answer their questions. Their friend hasn't been communicating with them, and they were all confused by her recent behavior. Sitting on chairs around a single table, they were all paying attention very closely so that they could make some sense of it all.

"Very well," the doctor said in response to Rin, and her gaze circled them all. She looked like she was trying to choose her words carefully so that everyone would understand. "If I had to put it simply, bipolar disorder is like a black-and-white perception of the world and of oneself. The life of a person who suffers from it consists mostly of two alternating states, depression and mania -or hypomania in its milder form."

"Wait, so this 'mania' is like the opposite of depression or what?" Luka asked. Kaito briefly peeked over at her. She seemed calm, but he could tell just how worried she was on the inside. The girl was fidgeting with her fingers -she always did that when she was nervous.

He remembered the night after Miku was rescued. Thanks to Sammy who didn't feel fresh enough to drive all the way back to Asahikawa, they were able to crash at the house of someone from the company not too far away. However, neither Kaito or Luka were able to sleep anyway, regardless of how physically and emotionally exhausted they were. They were sitting in the dark of their host's kitchen, processing all that had happened and talking about random stuff whenever they felt they needed to break the silence. She was still shaken up, and so they held hands just to reassure each other that they're there.

It was on that night that Kaito realised a lot of interesting things about Luka, and one of them was how much she needed company in times like that. She was undoubtedly a strong woman -the way she was able to deal with that whole situation more than proved it. But at the end of the day, she still needed someone to be there for her when she ran out of energy. And being there for her was the least Kaito could do, especially since Luka was always backing him up without hesitation.

Therefore, it was kind of difficult for him not to reach for her hand again at this moment.

"Not exactly," Mrs Sakamoto spoke up, distracting him from his thoughts. "Mania is more like a state of increased brain activity, so people in that state tend to be significantly more productive, impulsive and energised. The most severe instances might also include distorted views of reality and even hallucinating, but that does not appear to be the case of miss Hatsune."

"So what, Miku is sometimes active and sometimes she feels sad, is that what you're telling us?" said Rin and crossed her arms. "That doesn't sound like a big deal to me."

The therapist looked at her with endless patience. "See, that's a common misconception. 'Sadness' is a too general term to describe the feeling of depression. Depression is more like a persistent voice in your head, figuratively speaking, that is trying to convince you that you hate yourself. You may try to fight it, but this voice is always there trying to outsmart you."

"Yeah, _that_ we noticed, haven't we?" The twin girl looked at everyone in the room. "All those times she was so... scared that we don't care about her, or whatever. She would always come back to that, no matter how many times we would tell her that we love her."

"She probably wanted to believe that," Mrs Sakamoto nodded. "But if you constantly hear yourself say that you're useless, if you're forced to distance yourself from the people you love because you don't want them to see you in your weakest moments..." She paused. "Let's just say, you can eventually just lose all hope and give up on everything."

Her last sentence was hanging in the air for a moment. Kaito's eyes were shifting from one person to another; they were all probably thinking about the same things as himself, which was recalling as many details from Miku's behavior as he could. He was wondering if they could predict what happened and maybe try harder to prevent it. But apparently, none of them ever realised the broad impact of her troubles.

"Did we do something wrong?" Luka eventually asked, giving a voice to his own concern. "We were there for her, trying to help her all the time, but... Apparently it wasn't enough."

"I believe you did more than you can imagine at this moment," Mrs Sakamoto told her with a slight encouraging smile. "In fact, miss Hatsune wanted me to tell you how much she appreciates what each and every one of you had done for her. She loves you all and doesn't want you to worry too much. But you have to realise that neither depression or bipolar disorder are something that can be cured just with a few kind words. It's a constant battle, and while your help can make some difference, the biggest steps are always hers to make."

"But she _can_ get over this, right?" It was Len who asked the question that everyone had on their minds.

"Look," the therapist said and sighed; "you're all old enough so I will be honest with you. This kind of condition rarely goes away completely, even if treated. All we can hope for in therapy is to teach your friend about what's going on in her mind and give her enough inner strength to fight through it. You may call it a voice of reason if you'd like. Basically, miss Hatsune must learn not to succumb to her depressing thoughts or manic behavior. And again, you may try to remind her when you feel she's not being rational, but she has to be her own parent, so to speak."

"Parent..." That single word quietly slipped out of Kaito's mouth before he could stop it. He knew what the deal was: On that fateful night, Luka told him about what happened to Miku's parents. It stunned him. He would have expected to hear something like that from Miku herself back when they were a couple.

It was another one of those little things that convinced him their breakup was ultimately a good decision; she deserved someone who she could open up to completely. By the looks of it, she really only had him as an attempt to stop the everlasting feeling of loneliness. When Kaito first realised that, it hurt, but now that he knew what she was going through, he couldn't blame her.

"Still," Luka elaborated on her previous thought. "We probably should have known. I don't know about you guys, but it never crossed _my_ mind that Miku might be going through something like _this._ "

"Mine neither," said Rin. "I mean, I always knew she had it hard, but I kinda assumed she was just... I dunno, moody like that."

The therapist looked at her with a faint hint of empathy. "It's not your fault. We as a society lack proper discussion about mental health. I've been doing this for some time, and you'd be surprised how many people have no clue that these disorders even exist, even if it directly affects them or their loved ones."

"And why do you think that is?" Kaito asked. He knew Mrs Sakamoto was right. He had a vague memory of hearing someone mention bipolar disorder before, or maybe he just read it somewhere. However, he never put any effort into looking up more about it -he never had a reason, or so he used to think.

"I don't know," the doctor admitted. "Maybe it's because they teach you children so many things in school that there's not enough room for something this important. And maybe it's because people like to think that they have their brains under complete control. But illnesses like this affect the way you think, and even if you do notice it, it's never easy to go against your own will."

Meiko who had been quiet so far spoke up. "You know what, I have dealt with some really ignorant people. There are idiots walking among us who classify everyone like this just as 'crazy' and look down on them. I think they might also be a problem."

"Sadly, nobody can really understand what it's like to live with these disorders unless they went through it themselves," Mrs Sakamoto complained. "And that's exactly why we need to talk about this. We have to acknowledge this problem and learn how to help those who suffer from mental illnesses -or how to identify these problems in ourselves. That also goes for miss Hatsune. I believe much could have been prevented if she just seeked the help of a therapist sooner."

Kaito remembered a while back when the management offered to find a touring therapist for their group, just in case anyone wanted to talk about some difficult matters. All of them rejected the offer because they didn't feel they needed it -except for Miku who was actually interested in that idea, but never said why. Looking back at that moment, he thought she might have been too embarassed to admit she needed help. The memory made Kaito feel even more terrible.

The rest of that session went by rather quickly. They had some more questions which Mrs Sakamoto gladly answered, but she could only help them with understanding the basics of Miku's supposed condition. She didn't forget to highlight that each person with this disorder is a little different, and even if she at that point knew more about the girl in particular, most of the information gathered through therapy would not be hers to share. In the future, Miku would have to decide what to talk about with them and what to keep for herself.

Before the therapist left, she had them write short letters for Miku on which they were able to tell her how much they supported her. The singer had to be, on the doctor's advice, in as deep isolation from the outside world as possible for at least a couple of weeks. There was a transition to undergo, and pieces of her old life could easily return her back to the twisted comfort of her original state.

Kaito wasn't able to write anything, it was simply too weird for him to tell his ex-girlfriend how much he cared. In the end, he added his signature to Luka's letter; she wrote everything much more nicely than he could ever be able to, and he agreed with her on all levels.

After a lunch break, the five Vocaloids had another meeting, this time with two representatives of the management, a tall short-haired gentleman and a woman of an apparent European or American descent. They introduced themselves as Yuuto and Emily.

Kaito thought that the day couldn't possibly get even more interesting, to say the least, but he was about to be proven wrong.

"So, listen," Yuuto said when everybody sat down again. "First of all, thank you everyone for coming here on such short notice. We realise none of us were supposed to be here right now, but the... recent events called for this."

"No shit," Rin whispered. Kaito almost snickered, but managed to keep a straight face.

"As you know," the man continued as though he didn't notice; "we have two more shows booked on the eleventh and thirteenth. But that was before this thing with Miku happened."

 _"This thing?"_ Meiko repeated and frowned. "Geez, show a little more respect, please."

"That's not what we're here to discuss," Emily replied. "We are sorry for what happened, but what's done is done. We have to talk about the future next."

"Especially with the shows right around the corner," Yuuto added. "We are here to present to you the options that we have now."

"What options are there to have?" said Luka with a hint of confusion. "We'll just have to perform without Miku, right?"

"Well..." Yuuto suddenly looked nervous. He scratched his elbow and looked at his colleague for help.

Emily took a breath. "Here's the thing. You all know that your parts in the show are... rather small compared to Miku's. Even if we ask you to perform all of your songs, it will still not be enough. The fans would be disappointed."

"If you put it like that," Kaito spoke up, slowly feeling blood rush into his face; "it really feels like we're useless without Miku."

"We're not saying that!" the woman immediately tried to ease his mind. "But people mostly want to see her in particular, there's no point in denying it. We were... thinking whether performing the shows would still make sense without her."

"Fuck that!" Rin said and almost jumped out of her chair. "You can't be serious about cancelling the shows just because Miku can't be a part of them!"

"We understand it's difficult," Yuuto replied and smiled in an attempt to calm the twin down. "But it seems it makes the most sense. When the word gets out, we're afraid people are going to be returning their tickets, and performing for the few hundred who _might_ still want to come isn't a good idea. Both venues expect their performers to bring a certain amount of people, and they would most likely cancel the shows anyway if there's not enough interest in them."

"Are you sure you're not underestimating us? Or the audience?" said Luka. Kaito looked over at her; she looked tense. When she noticed he was looking at her and her eyes briefly met his, he quickly tore his gaze away from her and rather stared at Yuuto and Naomi who looked anything but happy with the way the meeting progressed.

"What do you mean?" the man asked Luka.

"I mean, if I was a Vocaloid fan who already paid for a ticket, I'd come just to see the rest of us. It's not like the crowd goes dead silent when we're on stage, dammit," she said vigorously. "They care about us too."

Yuuto massaged his eyes with his fingers. "Even so, you guys simply don't have enough material rehearsed. _If_ people were to show up, we don't want them to leave after fourty-five minutes. And finding you that many new original songs to practise within the next two weeks is just out of the question, understand."

"What if," Meiko suddenly suggested while seemingly carelessly eyeballing the ceiling; "what if we work with what we already have?"

"Were you not listening, Meiko? I just-"

"No, I don't mean our songs." She looked directly at Yuuto. "We could throw in some of Miku's songs for ourselves."

The conference room was quiet for two seconds. Everybody let Meiko's idea resonate in their heads. Then, Rin hit the table in front of her with her fist; most people flinched, and Kaito smirked at her.

"That's an incredible idea!" she shouted. "If people want Miku, we'll give them Miku. Everyone loves her songs and they'll sing them back at us. And _we_ kinda know her songs already. We can perform an entire two-hour set like that, easy-peasy."

"Okay, that sounds cool and all," said Emily and smiled at the girls with appreciation for their effort. "And the band wouldn't have to learn anything new at least. But what about Miku's choreographies? We can't expect you to learn them in such a short amount of time. I'm not even talking about costumes and-"

"Fuck choreographies and fuck costumes!" Rin retorted. Luka nudged on her with her elbow, likely to make her remember to watch her language, but she ignored her. "Why don't we just forget about all that shit for once?"

"Twice," Kaito corrected her.

"Twice," she repeated. "Whatever. People come to have a good time, not to stare in awe at us as we change clothes."

"It goes against your image," Yuuto said urgently. "You're supposed to be robots. We're not ready to show your human side yet."

"You're forgetting that the human side has already shown in us, Yuuto," Meiko reminded him. "At least in Miku it did."

Luka nodded. "Yeah, this whole problem stems from Miku being in therapy. How can we keep being robots after that?"

"Exactly!" Kaito agreed. He felt really supportive and enthusiastic about it. Everything the girls have said up to that point made sense. Cancelling the shows just because of Miku would be stupid; and if they were to get the management to agree with this idea, they could finally break the fourth wall -just like they wanted all those months ago when the group claustrophobia hit them.

"We're doing this for Miku, after all," Rin added. "Let them know. I mean, we don't have to tell them that she has bipolar disorder. Just that something's going on and we keep doing it for her."

Luka hugged her with one arm. Had Kaito been sitting closer, he'd probably do the same.

"And would you guys really want this?" Emily asked them. "Think about it. You'd have to learn at least four, five new songs each in a couple of days. Not impossible, but... if we bring this to the rest of the management and discuss it, we need to know if you're all sure you'll go for it."

And they all answered.

"Yes!"

"Fuck yeah!"

"Absolutely!"

"You bet!"

"Um, yeah, sure," said Len in his typical manner.

"Okay, look," Emily continued and looked over at Yuuto for permission; he gave her a single nod. "We'll present this idea to the others in the evening. No promises. We'll let you know as soon as the decision is made."

"Fair enough," said Kaito and grinned. In his mind, he was already shuffling through some of Miku's songs that he thought would work well with his voice and gender. For the first time in forever, he had something to actually look forward to.


	14. Ch 14 - Robots With Feelings

_Sidenote: Just recently Miku Expo 2018 Europe has been announced -Vocaloids are coming over to Europe for the first time in history! I'm so happy but probably won't end up going because I have no Vocaloid fans among my friends lol. But if any European fans are reading this, you shouldn't miss your chance! Just google 'Miku Expo 2018 Europe', there's an official website which you should keep an eye on. (I would post the link here but fanfiction net doesn't allow that. :/ )_

* * *

 **CHAPTER 14: Robots With Feelings**

Having been forced to practise so many 'new' songs with the band in such a short time span actually created a stronger bond between the singers and the band members. By the time the Budokan show came around, they would be all hanging out backstage like old friends. The all knew that this relaxed atmosphere wouldn't last forever; the next tour -even if the company hired the same musicians -would mean going back to the original plan, with every single step planned with precision for maximal effect. It was only the desperate measures of these desperate times that allowed them all to just enjoy themselves.

It was a good sign that just a handful of tickets had been turned back in after the announcement. The vast majority of people were curious enough to come and see what was going to happen.

The big guys in the management took a pretty long time to consider their idea of performing the two shows without Miku. Rin didn't completely agree with their point of view, but somewhere in the back of her head she knew well that they had to look at the lucrative side of their actions first. Without the money, they could all go back to their old boring lives.

The important thing, though, was that they ultimately agreed to everything. There were just a few rules -no profanities, very little crowd interaction (like hell, Rin thought), and nobody was supposed to say the reason why Miku isn't a part of those two shows. By some miracle, the word hadn't gotten out. The official statement that the management made was 'medical reasons', and even though the fans immediately began to come up with endless amounts of their own theories, the company thought it was best when nobody actually knew what the girl was dealing with.

Speaking of dealing with difficulties, Rin's phone rang mere minutes before she was supposed to go on stage. She had been receiving a lot of unpleasant phone calls and text messages, and she was running out of what little patience she had in the beginning.

"No," she said to the voice at the other end, slowly and loudly. "For the last time, stop trying. It's not happening."

"But..." Ichiro pleaded. "We had such a good time together! Are you really just gonna throw it all away like this?"

"That was before I saw what a dick you were."

"It was a mistake!"

"What was a mistake? Calling me a bitch for not fucking you while my friend was about to die?" Rin had no sympathy for his pseudo-apologies. "That wasn't a mistake, that was just you being an asshole."

"I was upset, ok? I didn't know what I was saying!"

"And you're telling me next time you're upset with me it's gonna be any different? I don't believe that."

"Why don't you just give me another chance?" he exclaimed angrily. "I deserve that!"

"Tell that to someone dumber than me. I don't want to be with you if I can't rely on you."

"Fucking- fuck you, then! I don't need your-"

The twin simply hung up on him and muted her phone. She closed her eyes and tried to calm down. She didn't want to have Ichiro on her mind now -she had work to do.

Maybe she would have been more merciful if he actually told her that he was sorry. But all he did was try to lay a guilt trip on her. He was so sure he had Rin wrapped around his finger, but that was where he was horribly wrong.

Someone's arms slithered around her shoulders from behind and pulled her in for a hug. There was only one person that gave Rin these sorts of hugs.

"I'm fine," she said, but grabbed the arms with her hands so that they wouldn't let go.

"I know you are," she heard Luka's voice above her head. "I'm just sorry you still have to deal with him."

Rin let out a single emotionless chuckle. "I guess I should be grateful that he didn't tell anyone what happened with Miku."

Her friend released her, and the twin turned to face her. It was a little strange to see Luka not wearing her canon outfit to the show; but everybody agreed that there was no need for their costumes since they weren't representing their android personas. The woman decided to wear the most simplistic clothes -a blue short-sleeved shirt, white trousers and sneakers. To top it all off, her hair were tied into a ponytail. Even Rin, contrasting to Luka in her angry-punk-kid looking shirt and a pair of torn shorts with two small chains attached to them, had to admit her friend looked cute. _No wonder Kaito has been drooling over her the entire afternoon._

"Are you wondering what it's gonna be like?" she asked her and looked towards the stage.

Luka smiled. "Not really. If anything, I know we're gonna have fun. Especially Kaito. The poor guy is about to sing Resonate, I still can't believe that."

"Oh my god, yes," the twin laughed. "That's such a Miku song! Although it could have been worse."

"Like what?"

"Like Cinderella. That would just be gay."

"That's mean," said Luka, and they both giggled. "Hey, Kaito!"

"What?" the boy who just emerged from the hallway backstage came close.

"We were just wondering why you didn't choose to sing Cinderella?" Luka teased him with a grin which would make devil himself proud.

Kaito pretended to be upset. "Ha-ha, very funny. You know, it's been really hard to come up with songs that weren't too... girly."

"Come to think of it, you're right." The pink girl absent-mindedly grabbed a single wisp of stray hair and twirled it around her finger. "Miku mostly sings about love or partying. And beating bullies."

"You mean Raspberry Monster? You know, when I first heard it, I thought it was about drugs." He smiled. "I'm glad you're doing that one. You already _look_ like a raspberry. More than Miku, that's for sure."

"Did you just assume my hair's flavor?"

"Maybe. You can call me Blueberry, I wouldn't mind."

"Wow, Blueberry Monster, I love it!"

With the two of them immediately getting lost in their own conversation, Rin was beginning to feel like the third wheel. But she was sort of amused by it. "Is that a play on words, Luka?" she said out loud innocently.

Both of them blushed a little bit, confirming her suspicion. Luckily for them, the crowd cheered at that exact time; when the three of them looked, they saw that the lights on stage went out, which meant that the show was about to begin.

"You're dumb, both of you," the girl said, trying to cover up her loss of pace. "I'm gonna go tell Mei and Len that we're about to start. See you soon!"

"Bye!" said the twin. Kaito only smiled and waved, and Luka swiftly turned around and walked away.

The instrumental intro began to play. Sammy peeked around the corner and nodded at Rin. It was her time to shine.

"Kaito?" she asked before leaving. "Can I tell you something?"

"Huh? Yeah, sure," he said.

"Just... promise me you aren't gonna let Luka slip between your fingers, ok?"

Kaito's eyes widened as if he had been caught doing something bad. "What do you mean?"

"Cut the crap, dude, please. She likes you, you like her, and you both deserve to be together. So my point is, if you fuck this up, I'm gonna murder you in your sleep." Rin snickered. "Okay gotta go now, bye!"

"You little-" he started, but she was already hopping towards the stage smiling ear to ear.

"This isn't over!" Kaito at least shouted after her.

 _No, it isn't,_ she thought. _I told you that we were gonna laugh one day, Luka._

In all fairness, Rin was only half serious when she first said that. She always knew Luka and Kaito were getting along, and it made sense in her head that they would end up together. But seeing that it was actually happening was still a little surprising.

Too many things seemed to be happening lately. Miku's issues kicking in, Ichiro turning out to be a douche, her friends falling in love so unexpectedly... It looked like in life either nothing was happening at all, or everything at once.

 _One thing at a time, Rin._ The girl quickly checked her surroundings. Bellatrix was sitting in a guitar stand right out of the people's sights, waiting to be picked up later in the evening.

Everything was ready. Rin inhaled deeply and took a couple of steps to reach the stage, waving and smiling at the fans who roared in excitement.

They cheered even louder when she decisively grabbed the mike stand and began to sing one of Miku's earlier songs, The World Is Mine. They immediately began to sing along with her, proving that they came to have a good time regardless of whether the turqoise star was there.

Just a few seconds in, Rin already knew that this would be a night they would all remember for the rest of their lives. Everyone, the performers and the fans alike, felt the lighter atmosphere and reacted accordingly. The musicians weren't standing in the back as always; those who could moved closer towards the edge of the stage and towards the crowd, making the ensemble feel like a regular band, with Rin being its regular singer. The people were slightly more responsive: rather than sitting back and listening -except for the freaks in the front rows who were _always_ going crazy -they jumped, waved, yelled, and overall enjoyed themselves. Just like she always pictured it. If it were possible, she would come down there and give everyone a hug.

After the first song they jumped right into The Lost One's Weeping which was Rin's own song for a change. And it was definitely more fitting to her angsty outfit. At least she didn't have a fake guitar this time.

The last chord struck, and the fans yelled excitedly. Now was the time to simply introduce Len who would immediately walk on the stage, but Rin intended to use this rare opportunity to do something she had wanted since the very beginning of the ensemble's existence.

"Konbanwa!" she said into the microphone. "Good evening, Budokan!"

The crowd responded with an adequate roar. Saying hello at the beginning was usually Miku's job, and to Rin, it only felt right to take over this responsibility since she started off the show on this evening. Besides, she rarely got the chance to say _anything_ to the fans.

"How are we feeling tonight, are we feeling good?" she continued.

"Woo!" the people answered. The girl smiled widely - _she_ certainly feel amazing.

"So," Rin breathed in; "as you know, this show is different from what you can usually expect from us, and I just gotta say, I'm so happy to see you all here tonight despite the circumstances, so thank you so fucking much for coming!"

"Yeeeah!" said the crowd. The twin also could have sworn to hear someone yell "We love you, Rin!" which made her grin even more.

"I love you too," she said in the general direction of that voice. "You know, it does kinda suck that Miku can't be here with us today, but what matters is that we love her, we love each other, and we love music, am I right?"

While the people were busy screaming, Rin glimpsed over to the side. All of her remaining colleagues -Luka, Kaito, Meiko and Len -were standing there, just out of the crowd's view, and couldn't have been more proud of her. Even Sammy, standing behind them all and gesturing to her to move on already, was smiling.

"Speaking of people who we love," the twin continued, "let's welcome my brother Len to the stage right now, shall we? Len Kagamine, everyone!"

The boy arrived, people cheered, and the band played the twins' unofficial theme song, Remote Control. After that song was done, Rin waved again and ran away to let her brother carry on -until it was his time to pass it up to Luka, and so on.

Not many people knew this, but writing a setlist had always been a science of its own. A good show had to have a delicate balance of old hits and newer or relatively undiscovered tunes that had to be introduced. At the same time, different songs obviously had different moods, and it would be contraproductive to play, for example, three sad lovesongs in a row. The performers needed to have maximum attention from the very beginning to the very last note, and that meant there were only so many ways to build a setlist. The management had a couple of people dedicated to carefully thinking about a specific potential that every song had, and then putting the setlist together piece by piece to meet the standards.

In the case of the Vocaloids, this was also the reason why Miku's five or six song sections were intertwined with the rest. New face appearing on stage was one of the ways to keep the crowd engaged. And even now it seemed reasonable not to have everyone just do all their songs at once and pass the mike.

Besides, this schedule arrangement allowed Rin to pull one more trick out of her sleeves.

"Crap," she said some thirty minutes later. Kaito was just finishing Resonate -which he completely nailed in the end -and the twin was supposed to go back on stage right after him. Her guitar was hanging on her shoulders. "I feel nervous. I never feel nervous."

"Hey." Len pat her on the back. "It's no different from what you already do. Except you won't have a band behind you this time."

"Yeah, that's exactly what I'm afraid of," she snickered. "All eyes on me and Bellatrix."

"All eyes have _always_ been on you anyway," her brother pointed out. "We know you can do this."

"Yeah, yeah. I guess it's just... This is the first time for just the two of us. You can't not be nervous before that."

It wasn't after she saw Len holding some intense giggles inside that she realised what she just said. The siblings laughed together.

"Have I ever told you that I'm glad I have you, bro?" Rin asked. The music stopped, and in a dim lighting all the musicians discretely began to disappear from the stage.

"I don't think so," Len replied. "But, same."

"Alright," said Kensuke, the drummer, who was just squeezing past them; "it's all yours, princess. Break a leg!"

"I will break yours if you call me 'princess' one more goddamn time." She smiled and walked in front of the crowd again. They greeted her, and all lights were shining on her.

"Well, um," Rin spoke to the microphone; "this is the first time ever I've done something like this, so let's just jump right to it before I freak out." Some people chuckled and wooed. "This is Tokyo Teddy Bear."

Performing a couple of songs unplugged was her own idea. Aside from being eager to introduce Bellatrix to the fans, she figured the band might also appreciate taking a short break in the middle of the show. And it was a nice change of pace. After the first verse, her voice stopped shaking and Rin really put her heart into it. And so did everyone else: when she didn't have the band behind her, she could really hear that enormous mass of people singing with her. It was quite a goosebumpy feeling. And Tokyo Teddy Bear was such a great song to play like that, too.

"You're amazing, thank you so much!" she yelled after the last chord, and the crowd screamed back and clapped frenetically. "I really wish Miku was here to see this.

Actually," Rin got an idea and reached into her pocket quickly. "Wanna say hi to Miku real quick?"

"Yeeeeah!" they answered. Obviously.

"Okay," she said and tapped on the screen until video recording was ready. "I'm gonna need everyone to be **really** quiet right now. Just wait for my cue."

Still facing the crowd, with only the abandoned drum kit in the background, she hit Record and smiled.

"Hi, Miku!" she started. "I hope you're doing great! I've got a couple of friends here with me right now who would like to say hello. Say hi, guys!"

With that, she turned around so that the camera would show all the people in the audience. As predicted, they went absolutely crazy. The twin couldn't help but scream into the camera along with them.

"Alrighty," she pressed on after the video was saved and the phone back inside her pocket. "With that out of the way, I would like to give you a song that me and Miku usually perform, it's one of my all time favorites -and I'm gonna bring back Luka to help me sing this, come on out, Luka!"

* * *

Needless to say, the entire evening was a tremendous success on all fronts. And of course they saved the best for last -as a small surprise for the end, the five Vocaloids practised a special rendition of Hand In Hand. The crowd reaction to that was so amazing that the friends agreed directly afterwards to persuade the management into doing something like this again in the future -having all six of them, including Miku, appear in the end to say goodbye all together.

"I wanted to tell you," Meiko suddenly turned to Rin as they were walking inside the living room; "you nailed your little speaches! You're a natural."

"Well thank you!" the twin beamed. "I just wanted to talk to everybody like a friend. Us and them, we're all in this together, right?"

"Hey, sis, can you show us that video for Miku?" Len asked. Rin reached into her pocket, took out her phone and played the whole thing while her friends were peeking over her shoulders.

"Do you think she'll like it?" she said when the video was over.

"Are you serious? Of course she will!" Kaito ruffled her hair; Rin rolled her eyes, but did so with a smile. "The only downside is that we're not in there too."

"We can fix that right now! Stand behind me, everybody!" she exclaimed and held the camera up.

And that little selfie, with the five of them smiling exhaustedly but happily into the camera, was one of the most treasured pictures Rin ever took.


	15. Ch 15 - Old Habits

**CHAPTER 15: Old Habits**

Despite the season, the air felt so fresh and warm outside that Miku decided to leave the window open, at least for the time being. Cars were driving by outside, people walking around, everyone living their own life with its own meaning. Even though she was somewhat more known around the world than regular people, she was still just one drop in the sea of souls. Co-existing, and yet independent.

How many people were completely untouched by the things that she went through at the end of last year? Close to none, at least when put into perspective with the enormous mass of mankind, that was for sure. No matter what, the world had been spinning long before Miku was born, and it would continue to exist long after she would be dead, so long as a random asteroid wouldn't about to collide with Earth in the next couple of decades.

Looking back at it all, her struggles felt almost ridiculous. Not that Miku wanted to belittle her condition; that night on the bridge, it was all undeniably real and serious. But Mrs Sakamoto did all she could to open her eyes. The girl wasn't any worse or any more special in this sense than the other billions of people living on the planet. There were so many who felt the things that she felt, so many who resorted to suicide attempts as the only solution they saw to everything. And if _they_ were able to get past that and live happy lives, then so was Miku.

She knew that before, but she didn't know how was she supposed to fight back. Mrs Sakamoto has shown her the door, and Miku was working her way through.

One of the steps she took required her to focus on the smallest of joyful moments throughout her day. Anything so stupid, in a way, as the taste of hot chocolate, hearing a nice song on the radio or her aunt smiling at her for no particular reason, Miku had to acknowledge and take time to appreciate. That way, she would be able to see how many good moments life offered, and it would eventually pull her out of the perpetually moving train of thought which was sometimes making her overlook the positives.

Maybe that made it easier for her to answer the door that morning. Miku would obviously be happy to see her friends anyway after all the long weeks, regardless of what her therapist told her about appreciating the good things. But her advice at least made the girl silence the voice of doubt in her -she was a little afraid of encountering her colleagues again, given the circumstances under which she had to leave before.

However, all that was left of this fear went away the second Rin leapt into her arms. Both girls laughed for each other, and Miku had no reason to doubt that the twin really missed her. Believing other people's feelings was another thing she had to learn in therapy, and someone as straightforward as Rin was a good place to start. Less so her brother who was a little more reluctant to hug her, but that was just the way he's always been.

Several minutes later, the trio was upstairs in her bedroom; Rin immediately began to aimlessly dig through Miku's manga collection, Miku was grinning at the back of the twin's neck from her rotating chair, and Len simply sat on her bed with an adorably awkward smile.

"Here you go," her aunt said when she walked inside the room with three hot chocolates on a tray which she placed on the desk. "Do you guys need anything else?"

"Seriously, auntie, we're good, don't worry," Miku said for about the sixteenth time that morning and smiled.

"Yeah, thanks, Mrs Hatsune!" Rin sprung up and reached for a colorful superhero mug.

"Okay, then. I will be downstairs if you need me," the woman replied and left the room again.

"Hey now!" Miku shouted when she saw her friend immediately turn back towards the messy pile of comic books on the floor with the mug still in her hand. "If you spill chocolate all over my comics, I'll kick your butt right out!"

"Ugh, fine," the twin groaned and looked around for a place to sit. Then, she saw a yellow bouncing ball in the corner and took it as her own.

"Seems you and your aunt are finally getting along," Len spoke up and carefully sipped on his chocolate, afraid that he'd burn his mouth.

"We're trying our best. This came from Sue as well."

"Sue?"

"My therapist. I call her that behind her back because, well, it's shorter." Miku snickered.

"And what did 'Sue' tell you?" Rin asked.

"Not much in particular. She just sort of forced us to communicate and talk about what was bothering us. There were some tears and we brought up so many dumb things from the past, but what's important is that we've been trying to stay honest with each other ever since. And we talk more."

"So what was the problem? I thought you couldn't stand each other."

"Well..." Miku paused and thought about how to phrase it correctly. "It's sort of funny, but neither of us could remember why we started to feel the way we did. Apparently there was some stuff way back in the past that we just ignored instead of trying to resolve it right away. And everything else built up from that."

Len seemed to be thinking. "Then it almost sounds like December was the best thing that could have happened to you."

"Bro!" his sister exclaimed. "How can you say that?"

Miku, however, giggled. "It's alright. You're not really wrong, Len. Sure, it was bad, but I probably wouldn't have actually started to try and make things better if that didn't happen."

"Still." Rin looked out the window. It was strange to see her this calm and motionless. "I wish things didn't have to go that far. We could have been better friends to you... and..."

"Don't even begin to think like that, silly!" Miku stopped her. She didn't want her to feel guilty. "You've done wonders for me. I don't blame anyone for what happened."

The twin girl was staring at her as if she expected her to get mad any moment. "Are you sure?"

"Hundred percent! That video you sent me from Budokan? Literally made my day. And that was just one of the moments when you guys managed to cheer me up when I needed it."

Rin looked away again and took a sip of her chocolate. Miku suspected her from tearing up and trying to hide it, but she let it slide.

"Miku?" said Len. "Do you feel comfortable talking about this? We can always change the subject."

"It's okay. I don't _love_ talking about it, but I should. At least for the time being. Sue said I shouldn't pretend it never happened."

"I don't think I wanna know all the details anyway. I like to picture you happy, if you know what I mean."

Miku laughed, and even Rin joined her. The other twin just snickered.

"You're one of a kind, Lenny," she told him.

Rin giggled. "You're not the only one who thinks that."

"Oh, not this again!" her brother muttered. "Do you really need to always jump from one ship to another?"

"YES!"

Now, Miku was slightly confused. "Hey, you two! What's all this about?"

"Len has a date."

"No I don't!" Len jumped up in frustration. "She just wanted to ask about some stuff about singing and showbiz. It's _not a date!_ "

The turqoise girl couldn't help but chuckle. Whoever this girl was, she made the twin boy show more emotion than she ever saw him show before. "So who is this person?"

Len didn't care to answer that, so his sister took over. "A girl from our class. Kinda crazy. She wants to sing like we do and _she totally has a crush on Len,_ " she added in an audible whisper.

"You've got it all wrong," he retorted and sat down again. "In fact, why don't you just mind your own business?"

"Okay, I'm sorry," she laughed. "I just gotta be enthusiastic about other people's love lives since mine's a disaster, you know what I'm saying?"

"Oh yeah, you did mention that you and Ichiro didn't work out that one time," Miku remembered. "What happened?"

"He's an idiot, that's what happened. He was all butthurt that I didn't want to..." The twin paused and looked over at Len who was suddenly carefully watching her every word. "...I didn't want to stay at his place when I wasn't exactly in the mood."

"I see. Then I guess you're better off without him?"

"Oh, absolutely! I don't know what I even saw on him in the first place."

"People change," the boy sighed. "I mean, Ichiro was always kind of a troublemaker, but I didn't think he'd turn out _that_ douchy."

Rin smiled. "Hey, let's not talk about him again, huh? Why don't we focus on someone who's actually got it working out for them?"

"Sister?!" said her brother in a dangerous tone and frowned at her.

"Not you! I meant Luka and Kaito."

"Ugh!" slipped out of Miku. "Sweetness alert!"

Len blinked. "You're not jealous, are you?"

Miku rolled her eyes and laughed at Len's understandable, but wrong assumption. "No, but Kaito's been reaching out to me asking for advice. If that's not ironic, I don't know what is."

"You, out of all people?" said Rin in disbelief.

"I mean, I get it. We've always been great friends, and if we have to be completely honest with each other, we were never supposed to be anything more than that. But having to read his messages about how he feels towards her... It's weird." Miku shrugged. "I hope he grows enough balls to tell her soon, then he might give me a break about all this."

Despite her tone, she was really rooting for Kaito. If what Rin told her was true, he and Luka were head over heels for one another, they were just both too scaredy to sit down and talk about their feelings. Not that everyone needed to do that, sometimes these things just happened -Miku would know. But knowing both of them, neither one was probably going to be satisfied until they heard it explicitely. That was why she encouraged and supported the hell out of Kaito -she wanted them to get there as soon as possible.

"I can't help but notice," the twin girl continued, "that everything seems to be working out well for once. I mean, Meiko's always been doing great, but now you're starting to feel better, I've gotten rid of Ichiro, Len has a girlfriend-"

"Shut up!"

"-and Luka and Kaito are totally hitting it off as well. Oh, and our fans love us now more than ever, so there's that," she finished with a chuckle.

Miku didn't want to argue with that just yet. Sue warned her that the reason she's been doing so well recently was only because this was merely the beginning of the process, and it was completely normal to feel highly motivated to achieve something in such an instance. But this motivation will go away one day, and she will have to be prepared to fight her demons again when they return.

But with enough effort to make things better and with her friends by her side, she wasn't afraid anymore; she saw there was a solution, and the path in front of her was more or less lit up now. In the end, Miku had to agree with the twin: everything was going to be alright.

* * *

That very night -which, due to time difference, actually meant a late afternoon in Europe -the city of Paris dove into darkness, as it did every evening. It was February so nightfalls were still coming pretty soon, although the days were slowly but surely stretching. The city was still very much alive after dusk as people were going by their daily tasks. The only difference between this and Summer probably was that there weren't that many tourists in Winter.

Regardless, the line of people who wanted to get to the top of the Eiffel Tower was so long that the two of them dismissed the idea of joining it. Luka was happy enough to have a selfie with the tower in the background -and Kaito in the front, of course.

For the time being, they both decided to undye their hair; Luka even cut it a bit shorter, knowing that it was going to grow back before the next tour would begin. This helped them become even more anonymous among the Europeans, most of whom already thought all Asians looked the same to begin with.

Fleeing far away from their fame at home was one of the reasons they traveled all the way to Paris. There was obviously another one, even bigger, to go on yet another vacation together, but neither she or Kaito said that out loud, although she thought they both must have subconsciously known it at that point. And still, in case he only liked her as a friend, Luka wanted the illusion of a relationship to last just a little while longer. He did already reject her once, after all, even if indirectly.

However, her potential fear didn't stop her from hanging on his arm when they aimlessly wandered through the city side by side. Whatever the true nature of their relationship was, it felt good having Kaito next to her, talking to him about whatever silly idea that crossed her mind, teasing him, trying to give back all the joy that he was able to give her simply by saying the right thing at the right time.

He demonstrated that when they suddenly found themselves walking past a random empty playground.

"Well this looks familiar," Kaito simply said, causing her to chuckle. Luka let go of his arm and leaned towards the metal railing surrounding the area, checking out the playground. There was a set of swings, a small carousel, and monkey bars of course.

"Um," he stuttered next to her. "Have I ever told you that I was sorry?"

She blinked and looked at him. "For what?"

"For kissing you that one time. I had no right to do that."

Luka laughed. "Gosh, it's almost exactly a year now, isn't it?"

"Seems about right."

"Well, let me ease your mind, Kaito. You have nothing to apologise for. We were both pretty drunk, and..." she gulped. "...and it was actually really nice."

"Yeah, it was," said the boy. They both briefly looked at each other before quickly tearing their gaze away and stubbornly staring in the other direction.

"Luka, can I ask you something?" Kaito mumbled and cleared his throat.

"Hm?"

"What... What do you think this thing between us is?"

Luka's heart stopped, and she took her time to choose her words carefully. The question was simple, but to her it seemed really unfair. This was clearly an opportunity to tell Kaito exactly how she felt; however, what if he didn't like what she'd say? And if she played it safe and said something different, what if he didn't like _that_ either?

"Uh," she opened her mouth and decided to brush it off as a joke for safety. "About fifteen inches of distance?"

"Come on," said Kaito, and Luka felt his hand on her arm. She turned and saw him looking directly at her. "I'm serious. I can't... just keep going until we settle this."

He breathed in and continued. "I really like you, Luka. You're more than just a friend to me, and that's why I have to know how you feel about us."

Her brain needed a moment to process this, but as soon as it reached the last corner of her mind, Luka jumped into Kaito's arms. He immediately clenched her back as if he expected her sudden attack.

"Is this a 'yes'?" he asked into her hair.

"No." She giggled. "You didn't ask a yes or no question."

"Okay, I'll just ask one now." Kaito pulled back and their eyes met again. "Can I kiss you?"

Unable to say a word, Luka simply nodded. They both leaned forward, holding each other's hands, and their lips softly touched. Her mind completely forgot about everything else to make room for the kiss, which was now securely imprented into her memory forever.

After an eternally long moment, they pulled back, looked at each other, laughed happily and hugged once more.

"You don't have to ask next time," she said.

* * *

 **THE END.**

* * *

 **Afterword**

 _I called this story 'Behind The Curtain' for two reasons. The first one was to highlight that when they're not performing, the performers -whether it means musicians, actors, or circus clowns -are completely normal human beings like anybody else, and they have their own lives outside of what regular people usually get to see. The second reason, a less obvious one, was more figurative. It represents the curtain of a human face, one that's capable of hiding what's happening inside the head._

 _Some of you might have been thinking: How could this author be so cruel to Miku? Why did he have to drag her through all that? Well, if I may be honest with you, I didn't like that all the time either. But I stuck to my initial goal, which was to write this story as realisticaly as I could. There are so many people out there who go through the same things, more or less. I wanted to dedicate Miku's part of the story to them._

 _I do not have bipolar disorder in particular. However, I do know people who struggle with it, as well as depression, borderline disorder, PTSD and so on. And it surprises me that some people still refuse to accept that these illnesses are 'real' in their consequences. In chapter 13, I used Mrs Sakamoto to voice my own concerns: there is not enough debate about this topic. We need to acknowledge that mental disorders exist and learn how to deal with them in ourselves and in other people around us._

 _I wrote this story not only to hopefully raise the awareness about this subject, but also to give out hope. There is always something you can do to fight back. Having reached rock bottom at one point in my life, I can tell you from experience -your brain tends to fuck with you. Just the fact that you_ think _something's true doesn't mean that it actually_ is. _Please, try to find the strength to outsmart your demons, and absolutely do find other people who can help you with it. Your true friends usually know better than you, you just have to believe them._

 _I know that this particular fanfiction isn't going to change the world and save lives. But I'm glad if I even made you think about all this some more. You can always share this story with people who you think might need some encouragement. And hey, if you struggle to fight your own battles, you can PM me without hesitation, and I can tell you all I know. I'm happy to help._

 _Thank you for being here until the end._

 _-GJ-_


End file.
